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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



©i^Hp. ©tip^riglji Ifxi.. 

Shelf ...a._T- 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



Whittier Birthday-Book. 



ARRANGED BY 

ELIZABETH S. OWEN. 



1 ■» 



O living friends who love me! 

dear ones gone above me! 
Careless of other fame, 

1 leave to you my name. 

My Triumph. 




BOSTON :- 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMP^ 

iS8i. 



/ 

/ 



•°7 



Copyright, i88r, 
Bv HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge '■ 
Electiotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co, 



PREFACE. 



In makinsr these selections for a birth- 
day book, it has been my aim to use the 
material in such a way as would be ap- 
proved by the author ; and I have made a 
special effort to obtain the birthdays of 
those persons to whom lines have been 
addressed. 

Not forgetting that this poet, so dear 
to the people, has drawn around him 

" The battered mail of Freedom's cause," 

I have remembered the names of Quincy, 
Palfrey, Sewall, May, Arago, Monod, and 
others, — friends of humanity. 

Nor have I failed to include, as seemed 
fitting, some prominent Quakers : as Gur- 
ney, Fry, Grimke, Mott, Barton, and Bene- 
zet. 



PREFACE. 

Many interesting and valuable names 
have been omitted, either from want of 
space or because the corresponding birth- 
days could not readily be found. 

I offer no apology for giving many names 
of not world-wide renown, but which, if 
examples of moral heroism and absolute 
self-sacrifice are worth anything to the 
children of to-day, might well be house- 
hold words, — reminding us all that 

" A harder path in earlier days 
Led up to God." 

E. S. O. 



IV 



2!itnuarp* 



THE NEW YEAR. 

The wave is breaking on the shore, — 
The echo fading from the chime, — 

Again the shadow moveth o'er 
The dial-plate of time ! 

Spring, with her change of sun and shower, 
And streams released from Winter's chain, 

And bursting bud, and opening flower. 
And greenly growing grain ; 

And Summer's shade, and sunshine warm. 
And rainbows o'er her hill-tops bowed, 

And voices in her rising storm, — 
God speaking from his cloud ! — 

And Autumn's fruits and clustering sheaves, 
And soft, warm days of golden light, 

The glory of her forest leaves, 
And harvest-moon at night ; 

And Winter with her leafless grove. 

And prisoned stream, and drifting snow, 

The brilliance of her heaven above 
And of her earth below. 

I 



January i. 

East, West, and North, the shout is heard, 

Of freemen rising for the right : 
Each valley hath its rallying word, — 

Each hill its signal light. 

O'er Massachusetts' rocks of gray, 

The strengthening light of freedom shines, 

Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay, — 
And Vermont's snow-hung pines ! 

From Hudson's frowning palisades 

To Alleghany's laurelled crest. 
O'er lakes and prairies, streams and glades. 

It shines upon the West. The New Year. 



January 2. 

Still linger in our noon of time 

And on our Saxon tongue 
The echoes of the home-born hymns 

The Aryan mothers sung. 

And childhood had its litanies 

In every age and clime ; 
The earliest cradles of the race 

Were rocked to poet's rhyme. 

• • • • • •♦• 

The mystery of unfolding life 

Was more than dawning morn, 
Than opening flower or crescent moon 

The human soul new-born ! Child Songs 

2 



January i. 

Emancipation Proclamation, 1S63 ; Maria Edgeworth, 17^67; 
Arthur Hugh Clough, 18 ig. 



January 2. 



January 3. 

Only in the gathered silence 
Of a calm and waiting frame 

Light and wisdom as from Heaven 
To the seeker came. 

Not to ease and aimless quiet 
Doth that inward answer tend, 

But to works of love and duty 
As our being's end, — 

Not to idle dreams and trances, 
Length of face, and solemn tone, 

But to Faith, in daily striving 
And performance shown. To — 



January 4. 

O heart of mine, keep patience ! — Looking forth, 
As from the Mount of Vision, I behold, 

Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ on 
earth, — 
The martyr's dream, the golden age foretold ! 

And found, at last, the mystic Graal I see. 

Brimmed with His blessing, pass from lip to lip 
In sacred pledge of human fellowship ; 
And over all the songs of angels hear, — 
Songs of the love that casteth out all fear, — 
Songs of the Gospel of Humanity ! 

On a Prayer-Book. 

4 



January 3. 

Lucretia ]\Iott, 1793. 



January 4. 

Archbishop Usher, 15S0; Benjamin Lundy, 1789. 



January 5. 

And he, who to the lettered wealth 

Of ages adds the lore unpriced, 

The wisdom and the moral health, 

The ethics of the school of Christ ; 

The statesman to his holy trust, 

As the Athenian archon, just, 

Struck down, exiled like him for truth alone, 

Has he not graced my home with beauty all his 

own ? 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 



January 6. 

One language held his heart and lip, 
Straight onward to his goal he trod, 

And proved the highest statesmanship 
Obedience to the voice of God. 

Safely his dearest friends may own 
The slight defects he never hid, 

The surface-blemish in the stone 
Of the tall, stately pyramid. 

Suffice it that he never brought 

His conscience to the public mart ; 

But lived himself the truth he taught, 

White-souled, clean-handed, pure of heart. 

Sumner, 

6 



January 5. 



January 6. 

Charles Sumner, 1811 ; Owen Lovejoy, 1811. 



January 7. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore 

The loosening drift its breath before ; 

Low circling round its southern zone, 

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. 

No church-bell lent its Christian tone 

To the savage air, no social smoke 

Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. 

A solitude made more intense 

By dreary-voiced elements. 

The shrieking of the mindless wind, 

The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind. 

And on the glass the unmeaning beat 

Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 

Snow-Bound. 



January 8. 

Ah, well ! — The world is discreet ; 

There are plenty to pause and wait ; 
But here was a man who set his feet 

Sometimes in advance of fate, — 

Plucked off the old bark when the inner 

Was slow to renew it. 
And put to the Lord's work the sinner 

When saints failed to do it. 

• 

Never rode to the wrong's redressing 

A worthier paladin. 
Shall he not hear the blessing, 

" Good and faithful, enter in ! " To G. L. 

8 



January 7. 



January 8. 

George Luther Stearns, 1809. 



January 9. 

" Neither present fame, nor war, nor power, nor 
wealth, nor knowledge alone shall secure an en- 
trance to the true and noble Valhalla. There shall 
be gathered only those who have toiled each in 
his vocation for the welfare of others." " Justice 
and benevolence are higher than knowledge and 
power." Fame and Glorv. 

All which is real now remaineth, 

And fadeth never : 
The hand which upholds it now sustaineth 

The soul forever. My Soul and I. 



January 10. 

How smiled the land of France 
Under thy blue eye's glance, 

Light-hearted rover ! 
Old walls of chateaux gray, 
Towers of an early day, 
Which the Three Colors play 

Flauntingly over. 

Now midst the brilliant train 
Thronging the banks of Seine : 

Now midst the splendor 
Of the wild Alpine range, 
Waking with change on change 
Thoughts in thy young heart strange. 

Lovely, and tender. To a Fkiknd. 

10 



January 9. 

Lemuel Shaw, 17S1. 



January io. 



II 



January ii. 

He brought us wonders of the new and old ; 

We shared all climes with him. The Arab's tent 

To him its story-telling secret lent. 
And, pleased, we listened to the tales he told. 
His task, beguiled with songs that shall endure, 

In manly, honest thoroughness he wrought ; 

From humble home-lays to the heights of thought 
Slowly he climbed, but every step was sure. 

O Vale of Chester ! trod by him so oft. 
Green as thy June turf keep his memory. 

Bayard Taylor. 
• 

January 12. 

They set their faces to the blast, 

They trod the eternal snow. 
And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last 

The promised land below. 

Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed 

By many an icy horn ; 
Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed. 

And green with vines and corn. 

The Pass of the Sierra. 

Sternly faithful to duty, in peril, and suffering, 

and self-denial, they wrought out the noblest of 

historical epics on the rough soil of New England. 

They lived a truer poetry than Homer or Virgil 

wrote. Pawtucket Falls. 

12 



January ii. 

Bayard Taylor, 1825; Alexander Hamilton, 1757. 



♦ " - 



January 12. 

Governor WInthrop, 1588. 



13 



January 13. 

We want something beyond the bare announce- 
ment of the momentous fact of a future life ; we 
long for a miracle to confirm our weak faith and 
silence forever the doubts which torment us. 

My Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

The letter fails, and systems fall, 

And every symbol wanes ; 
The Spirit over-brooding all 

Eternal love remains. 

And not for signs in heaven above 

On earth below they look. 
Who know with John his smile of love, 

With Peter his rebuke. Our Master. 



January 14. 

And if her life small leisure found 
For feasting ear and eye, 

Yet with her went a secret sense 
Of all things sweet and fair, 

And Beauty's gracious providence 
Refreshed her unaware. 

She kept her line of rectitude 

With love's unconscious ease ; 
Her kindly instincts understood 
All gentle courtesies. 

The Friend's Buriajl. 
14 



January 13. 



January 14. 



15 



January 15. 

Forever ours ! for good or ill, on us the burden lies ; 
God's balance, watched by angels, is hung across 

the skies. 
Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn the poised 

and trembling scale ? The Crisis. 

Take heart ! — the Waster builds again, — 

A charmed life old Goodness hath ; 
The tares may perish, — but the grain 

Is not for death. The Reformer. 



January 16. 

How yonder Ethiopian hemlock 
Crowned with his glistening circlet stands ! 
What jewels light his swarthy hands ! 

The Pageant. 

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low. 
To guard our necks and ears from snow. 
We cut the solid whiteness through. 
And, where the drift was deepest, made 
A tunnel walled and overlaid 
With dazzling crystal : we had read 
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 
And to our own his name we gave, 
With many a wish the luck were oars 
To test his lamp's supernal powers. 

Snow-Bound. 
16 



January 15. 



January 16. 



17 



January 17. 

He who might Plato's banquet grace, 

Have I not seen before me sit, 
And watched his puritanic face, 

With more than Eastern wisdom lit ? 
Shrewd mystic ! who, upon the back 
Of his Poor Richard's Ahnanack, 
Writing the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's dream, 
Links Menu's age of thought to Fulton's age of 
steam ! The Last Walk in Autumn. 



January 18. 

Whom the rich heavens did so endow 
With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, 
With all the massive strength that fills . 
Thy home-horizon's granite hills, 
With rarest gifts of heart aii^cl head 
From manliest stock inherited, 
New England's stateliest type of man. 
In port and speech Olympian ; 

• • •••••• 

Thou shouldst have lived to feel below 
Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow, — 
The late-sprung mine that underlaid 
Thy sad concessions vainly made. 

Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, 
O sleeper by the Northern sea, 
The gates of opportunity ! Lost Occasion. 

iS 



January 17. 

Benjamin Franklin, 1706; Charles Brockden Brown, 1771. 



January i8. 

Daniel Webster, 1782. 



19 



January 19. 

His simple tale of love and woe 
All hearts had melted, high or low ; — 
A blissful pain, a sweet distress, 
Immortal in its tenderness. 

Chapel of the Hermits. 

Not without envy Wealth at times must look 
On their brown strength who wield the reaping- 
hook 

And scythe, or at the forge-fire shape the plow 
Or the steel harness of the steeds of steam ; — 

All who, by skill and patience, anyhow 
Make service noble, and the earth redeem 
From savageness. By kingly accolade 
Than theirs was never worthier knighthood made. 

The Problem. 



January 20. 

Home of my fathers ! — I have stood 
Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood : 
Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade 
Along his frowning Palisade ; 
Looked down the Appalachian peak 
On Juniata's silver streak ; 
Have seen along his valley gleam 
The Mohawk's softly winding stream ; 
Yet wheresoe'er his step might be, 
Thy wandering child looked back to thee ! 

The Merrimack. 
20 



January 19. 

Bernardin St. Pierre, 1737; James Watt, 1736. 



January 20. 

Nathaniel P. Willis, 1806. 



21 



January 21. 

O, never yet since Roland wound his horn 
At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown 
Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own. 
Heard from the van of freedom's hope forlorn ! 

To John C. Fremont. 

Over Barbara Frietchie's grave, 
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave ! 

Peace and order and beauty draw 
Round thy symbol of light and law ; 

Honor to her ! and let a tear 

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier. 

Barbara Frietchie. 



January 22. 

What lack of goodly company, 

When masters of the ancient lyre 
Obey my call, and trace for me 

Their words of mingled tears and fire ! 
I talk with Bacon, grave and wise, 
I read the world with Pascal's eyes ; 
And priest and sage, with solemn brows austere, 
And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of Thought, 
draw near. 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 
22 



January 21. 

John C. Fremont, 1813 ; Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson, 1S24. 
Adolphe Monod, 1802. 



January 22. 

Francis Bacon, 1561. 



23 



January 23. 

We turn the pages that they read, 

Their written words we linger o'er, 
But in the sun they cast no shade, 
No voice is heard, no sign is made, 

No step is on the conscious floor ! 
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, 
(Since He who knows our need is just,) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 

Snow-Bound. 



January 24. 

Friend of the Slave, and yet the friend of all ; 
Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when 
The need of battling Freedom called for men 
To plant the banner on the outer wall ; 
Gentle and kindly, ever at distress 
Melted to more than woman's tenderness, 
Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post 
Fronting the violence of a maddened host. 
Like some gray rock from which the waves arc 

tossed ! 
Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned not 
The faith of one whose walk and word were 
right. To Daniel Neall. 



24 



January 23. 



January 24. 

Daniel Neall, 1784. 



25 



January 25. 

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns ! 
The moorland flower and peasant ! 

Not his the song whose thunderous chime 

Eternal echoes render, — 
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, 

And Milton's starry splendor ! 

But who his human heart has laid 

To Nature's bosom nearer ? 
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid 

To love a tribute dearer ? Burns. 



January 26. 

All night has the white meteor fallen in broad 
flake or minutest crystal, the sport and plaything 
of winds that have wrought it into a thousand 
shapes of wild beauty. 

My Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

Away with weary cares and themes ! — 
Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams ! 
Leave free once more the land which teems 

With wonders and romances ! 
Where thou, with clear discerning eyes, 
Shalt rightly read the truth which lies 
Beneath the quaintly masking guise 

Of wild and wizard fancies. To my Sister. 

26 



January 25. 

Robert Burns, 1759; James Hogg, 1772. 



January 26. 

Thomas Noon Talfourd, 1795 



27 



January 27. 

Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys, 
The anthem of the destinies ! 
The minor of Thy loftier strain. 
Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain, 
Thy will be done ! Thy Will be done. 

Know well, my soul, God's hand conti^ols 

Whate'er thou fearest ; 
Round him in calmest music rolls 

Whate'er thou hearest. 

What to thee is shadow, to Him is day, 

And the end He knoweth, 
And not on a blind and aimless way 

The spirit goeth. My Soul and I. 



January 28. 

Our English tongue is peculiarly rich in the lore 
of home and fireside. Preface to Child Life. 

When snow-flakes o'er the frozen earth, 

Instead of birds, are flitting , 
When children throng the glowing hearth, 

And quiet wives are knitting ; 
While in the fire-light strong and clear 

Young eyes of pleasure glisten, 
To tales of all we see and hear 

The ears of home shall listen. 

The Drovers. 
28 



January 27. 

Mozart, 1756; Theodore Sedgwick, 1811. 



January 28. 



29 



January 29. 

A man remarkable for his practical activities, an 
ardent scholar of the exact sciences, versed in all 
the arcana of physics, a skillful and inventive mech- 
anician, he has evolved from the hard and gross 
materialism of his studies a system of transcend- 
ent spiritualism. From his aggregation of cold 
and apparently lifeless practical facts beautiful and 
wonderful abstractions start forth like blossoms on 
the rod of the Levite. Swedenborg. 



January 30. 

What is the priest even of our New England 
but a living testimony to the truth of the super- 
natural and the reality of the unseen, — a man of 
mystery, walking in the shadow of the ideal world ? 

The Agency of Evil. 

The pause before the breaking seals 

Of mystery is this ; 
Yon miracle-play of night and day 

Makes dumb its witnesses. 
What unseen altar crowns the hills 

That reach up stair on stair ? 

What Presence from the heavenly heights 
To those of earth stoops down ? 

Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods 
On Ida's snowy crown ! 

Sunset on the Bearcamp. 

30 



January 29. 

Emanuel Swedenborg, 1689. 



January 30. 



31 



January 31. 

The poor French neutrals who were brought to 
Philadelphia from Nova Scotia, and landed penni- 
less and despairing among strangers in tongue and 
religion, found in him a warm and untiring friend. 
Introduction to Woolman's Journal. 

And the young city, round whose virgin zone 
The rivers like two mighty arms were thrown, 
Marked by the smoke of evening fires alone, 

Lay in the distance, lovely even then 
With its fair women and its stately men. 

• •••»••••• 

Urban yet sylvan ; in its rough-hewn frames 
Of oak and pine the dryads held their claims, 
And lent its streets their pleasant woodland names. 

Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 



32 



• January 31. 

Anthony Benezet, 1713; Bernard Barton, 1784. 



33 



THE PAGEANT. 

A SOUND as if from bells of silver, 
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear, 
Through the frost-pictm'ed panes I hear. 

A brightness which outshines the morning, 
A splendor brooking no delay, 
Beckons and tempts my feet away. 

I leave the trodden village highway 

For virgin snow-paths glimmering through 
A jewelled elm-tree avenue ; 

Where, keen against the walls of sapphire, 
The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed, 
Hold up their chandeliers of frost. 

I tread in Orient halls enchanted, 

I dream the Saga's dream of caves 
Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves ! 

I walk the land of Eldorado, 

I touch its mimic garden bowers. 
Its silver leaves and diamond flowers ! 

34 




'itf 4f 



fcfiruarp* 



THE CLEAR VISION. 

I DID but dream. I never knew 

What charms our sternest season wore. 

Was never yet the sky so blue, 
Was never earth so white before. 

Till now I never saw the glow 

Of sunset on yon hills of snow, 

And never learned the bough's designs 

Of beauty in its leafless lines. 

Did ever such a morning break 

As that my eastern windows see .'* 
Did ever such a moonlight take 

Weird photographs of shrub and tree ? 
Rang ever bells so wild and fleet 
The music of the winter street ? 
Was ever yet a sound by half 
So merry as yon school-boy's laugh .-* 



35 



February i. 

Better than self-indulgent years 
The outflung heart of youth, 

Than pleasant songs in idle years 
The tumult of the truth. 

Rest for the weary hands is good, 
And love for hearts that pine, 

But let the manly habitude 
Of upright souls be mine. 

My Birthday. 

God works in all things ; all obey 

His first propulsion from the night : 
Wake thou and watch ! — the world is gray 
With morning light ! The Reformer. 



February 2. 

He who would benefit his fellow-man must " walk 
by faith," sowing his seed in the morning, and in 
the evening withholding not his hand. 

Scottish Reformers. 

Wisely and well said the Eastern bard : 
Fear is easy, but love is hard, — 
Easy to glow with the Santon's rage, 
And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage ; 
But he is greatest and best who can 
Worship Allah by loving man. 

The Preacher. 

36 



February i. 

Edmund Quincy, 1808. 



February 2. 



37 



February 3. 

A loving heart carries with it, under every paral- 
lel of latitude, the warmth and light of the tropics. 
It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary 
place, and sows with flowers the gray desolation of 
rocks and mosses. 

My Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

The bark by tempest vainly tossed 

May founder in the calm, 
And he who braved the polar frost 

Faint by the isles of balm. 

Mv Birthday. 

• 

February 4. 

The memory of thy loveliness 

Shall round our weary pathway smile, 

Like moonlight when the sun has set, — 

A sweet and tender radiance yet. 

Thoughts of thy clear-eyed sense of duty. 
Thy generous scorn of all things wrong, — 

The truth, the strength, the graceful beauty 

"Which blended in thy song. 

Lucy Hooper. 

Statesmen like those who sought the primal fount 
Of righteous law, the Sermon on the Mount ; 
Lawyers who prize, like Quincy, (to our day 
Still spared. Heaven bless him !) honor more than 
pay. The Panorama. 

38 



February 3. 

Elisha Kent Kane, 1820. 



February 4. 

Lucy Hooper, 1816; Josiali Quincy, 1772. 



39 



February 5. 

Brave men and faithful ! It is not necessary that 
the present generation, now quietly reaping the fruit 
of your heroic endurance, should see eye to eye 
with you in respect to all your testimonies and be- 
liefs, in order to recognize your claim to gratitude 
and admiration. Thomas Ellwood. 

Our fathers to their graves have gone ; 
Their strife is past, — their triumph won ; 
But sterner trials wait the race 
Which rises in their honored place, — 
A moral warfare with the crime 
And folly of an evil time. 

The Moral Warfare. 



February 6. 

Where I least expected them, I have encountered 
shapes of evil ; while, on the other hand, I have 
found beautiful, heroic love and self-denial in those 
who had seemed to me frivolous and selfish. 

My Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

No longer forward nor behind 

I look in hope or fear ; 
But, grateful, take the good I find, 
The best of now and here. 

My Psalm. 
40 



February 5. 

James Otis, 1725 



February 6. 



41 



February 7. 

" Praise to the place-man who can hold aloof 
His still unpurchased manhood, office-proof ; 
Who on his round of duty walks erect, 
And leaves it only rich in self-respect, — 
As More maintained his virtue's lofty port 
In the Eighth Henry's base and bloody court. 

The Panorama. 

Art builds on sand ; the works of pride 
And human passion change and fall ; 

But that which shares the life of God 

With Him surviveth all. Wordsworth. 



February 8. 

Then up spake John de Matha : 

" God's errands never fail ! 
Take thou the mantle which I wear, 

And make of it a sail." 

They raised the cross-wrought mantle. 

The blue, the white, the red ; 
And straight before the wind off-shore 

The ship of Freedom sped. 

• •••,••• 

So on through storm and darkness 

They drove for weary hours ; 
And lo ! the third gray morning shone 
On Ostia's friendly towers. 

The Mantle of St. John de Matha. 
42 



February 7. 

Sir Thomas More, 1480. 



February 8. 

St. John de Matha (d.), 1213. 



43 



February 9. 

The whole country being covered with snow, and 
the weather being extreme cold, we can scarce say 
much of the natural gifts and advantages of our 
new home ; but it lieth on a small river, and there 
be fertile meadows, and old corn-fields of the In- 
dians, and good springs of water, so that I am told 
it is a desirable and pleasing place in the warm 
season. Margaret Smith's Journal. 

A life of beauty lends to all it sees 

The beauty of its thought ; 
And fairest forms and sweetest harmonies 

Make glad its way, unsought. 

Christian Tourists. 



February 10. 

O Ary Scheffer ! when beneath thine eye, 

Touched with the light that cometh from above, 

Grew the sweet picture of the dear Lord's love, 

No dream hadst thou that Christian hands would 

tear 
Therefrom the token of his equal care. 
And make thy symbol of his truth a lie ! 

On a Prayer-Book. 

To Thee our full humanity, 

Its joys and pains, belong ; 

The wrong of man to man on Thee 

Inflicts a deeper wrong. 

Our Mastec. 

44 



February 9. 



February 10. 

Ary Scheffer, 1795. 



45 



February ii. 

Sharing His love who holds in His embrace 

The lowliest of our race, 
Sure the Divine economy must be 

Conservative of thee ! 

For truth must live with truth, self-sacrifice 

Seek out its great allies ; 
Good must find good by gravitation sure, 

And love with love endure. 

Within the Gate. 



February 12. 

The cloudy sign, the fiery guide, 

Along his pathway ran. 
And Nature, through his voice, denied 

The ownership of man. 

We rest in peace where these sad eyes 

Saw peri], strife, and pain ; 
His was the nation's sacrifice, 

And ours the priceless gain. 

The Emancipation Group- 

The life of Cotton Mather is as full of romance 
as the legends of Ariosto or the tales of Beltene- 
bros and Florisando in Amadis de Gaul. 

The Agency of Evil. 
a6 



February ii. 

Lydia Maria Child, 1802. 



February 12. 

Abraham Lincoln, 1809; Charles Robert Darwin, 1809; 
Cotton Mather, 1663. 



47 



February 13. 

A true life is at once interpreter and proof of the 
Gospel. Introduction to Woolman's Journal. 

Then faint not, falter not, nor plead 
Thy weakness ; truth itself is strong ; 

The lion's strength, the eagle's speed, 
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong. 

Thy nature, which, through fire and flood, 
To place or gain finds out its way, 

Hath power to seek the highest good, 

And duty's holiest call obey ! The Voices. 



February 14. 

Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, nor 
The half-unconscious power to draw 
All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law. 

With these good gifts of God is cast 

Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast 

To hold the blessed angels fast. Benedicite 

From the eternal shadow rounding 

All our sun and starlight here, 
Voices of our lost ones sounding 
Bid us be of heart and cheer, 
Through the silence, down the spaces, falling on 
the inward ear. 
Lines Suggested by a Visit to Washington, Va. 

48 



February 13. 



February 14. 



49 



February 15. 

No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our high- 
ways go, — 

Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the 
snow ; 

And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon their 
errands far, 

A thousand sails of commerce swell, but none are 
spread for war. 

Massachusetts to Virginia. 



February 16. 

Bring pike and gun, the sword's red scourge, 

The negro's broken chains, 
And beat them at the blacksmith's forge 

To ploughshares for our plains. 

Alike henceforth ouc-iills of snow, 
And vales where cotton flowers ; 

All streams that flow, all winds that blow, 
Are Freedom's motive-powers. 

Henceforth to Labor's chivalry 

Be knightly honors paid; 
For nobler than the sword's shall be 

The sickle's accolade. 

The Peace Autumk. 



50 



February 15. 



February 16. 

Henry Wilson, 1812. 



51 



February 17. 

My soul is full of thankfulness, and a sweet in- 
ward peace is my portion. Hard things are made 
easy to me ; this desert place, with its lonely woods 
and wintry snows, is beautiful in mine eyes. 

Margaret Smith's Journal. 

Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! 
Who, hopeless, la3's his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown. 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own ! 

Snow-Bound. 



February 18. 

All day the darkness and the cold 

Upon my heart have lain. 
Like shadows on the winter sky, 

Like frost upon the pane ; 

But now my torpid fancy wakes. 

And, on thy Eagle's plume. 
Rides forth, like Sindbad on his bird. 
Or witch upon her broom ! 
On receiving an Eagle's Quill from Lake Superior. 

52 



February 17. 



February 18. 

Charles Lamb, 1775. 



53 



February 19. 

O, would I were as free to rise 

As leaves on autumn's whirlwind borne, -*• 
The arrowy light of sunset skies, 

Or sound, or ray, or star of morn. Hymns. 

What matter though we seek with pain 
The garden of the gods in vain. 
If lured thereby we climb to greet 
Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet ? 

• ••• •••• 

Life's fairest things are those which seem, 
The best is that of which we dream. 

Seeking of the Waterfall. 

— ♦— — 

February 20. 

Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight. 
Through present wrong, the eternal right ; 
And, step by step, since time began, 
I see the steady gain of man ; 

That all of good the past hath had 
Remains to make our own time glad, — 
Our common daily life divine, 
And every land a Palestine. 

For still the new transcends the old, 
In signs and tokens manifold. 

Chapel of the Hermits. 

54 



February 19. 

William W. Story, 1S19 



February 20. 

Angelina Grimke Weld, 1805 ; Mary Starbuck, 1645. 



55 



February 21. 

How sweetly come the holy psalms 
From saints and martyrs down, 

The choral praise, the chanted prayers 

From harps by angels strung, 
The hunted Cameron's mountain airs, 

The hymns that Luther sung ! 

BuRNs's Festival. 

Scotland, from lake and tarn and rill. 
And mountain hold, and heathery hill, 

Shall catch and echo back the note. 
As if she heard upon her air 
Once more her Cameronian's prayer 

And song of Freedom float. 

World's Convention. 



February 22. 

O Spirit of that early day, 
So pure and strong and true. 

Be with us in the narrow way 
Our faithful fathers knew. 

The Quaker of the Olden Time. 

Through the harsh noises of our day 
A low, sweet prelude finds its way ; 
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear, 
A light is breaking, calm and clear. 

The Chapel of the Hermits. 

S6 



February 21. 

David Halliday (d.), 1685. 



February 22. 

Josiah Quincy, Jr., 1744; James Russell Lowell, 1819. 



57 



February 23. 

The tale is one of distant skies; 

The dust of half a century lies 

Upon it ; yet its hero's name 

Still lingers on the lips of Fame. 

Dernh. 

Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart 

the battle rolled, 
In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's 

lips grew cold. 
But the noble Mexic women still their holy task 

pursued, 

Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender 

care they hung, 
And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange 

and Northern tongue. 

The Angels of Buena Vista. 



February 24. 

The great eventful Present hides the Past ; but 
through the din 

Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life be- 
hind steal in ; 

And the lore of home and fireside, and the legend- 
ary rhyme. 

Make the task of duty lighter which the true man 
owes his time. • 

The Garrison of Cape Ann. 

58 



February 23. 

Gen. Wm. Eaton, 1764; Battle of Buena Vista, 1847. 



February 24. 

Theophilus Parsons, 1750; George Wm. Curtis, 1824. 



59 



February 25. 

May many more of quiet years be added to your 

sum, 
And, late at last, in tenderest love, the beckoning 

angel come. 

Dear hearts are here, dear hearts are there, alike 

below, above ; 
Our friends are now in either world, and love is 

sure of love. 

The Golden Wedding of Longwood. 



February 26. 

The life to be 

Is still the unguessed mystery : 
Unsealed, unpierced the cloudy walls remain. 
We beat with dream and wish the soundless doors 

in vain. The Tent on the Beach. 

We dwell with fears on either hand, 

Within a daily strife. 
And spectral problems waiting stand 

Before the gates of life. 

The doubts we vainly seek to solve, 

The truths we know, are one ; 
The known and nameless stars revolve 
Around the Central Sun. 

The Old Burving-Ground. 
60 



February 25. 



February 26. 

Frangois J. D. Arago, 1786; Victor Hugo, 1802. 



61 



February 27. 

I have ventured to let the name of the author of 
" Evangeline " represent, as it well may, the pres- 
ent poetic culture of our English-speaking people 
at home and abroad. 

Preface to Songs of Three Centuries. 



Slow passed that vision from my view, 
But not the lesson which it taught ; 

The soft, calm shadows which it threw 
Still rested on my thought : 

The truth, that painter, bard, and sage. 
Even in Earth's cold and changeful clime, 

Plant for their deathless heritage 

The fruits and flowers of time. Raphael. 



February 28. 

Fair seem these winter days, and soon 
Shall blow the warm west-winds of spring 

To set the unbound rills in tune. 
And hither urge the bluebird's wing. 

The Clear Vision. 

The jewels loosen on the branches, 

And lightly, as the soft winds blow. 
Fall, tinkling, on the ice below. 

The Pageant 
62 



February 27. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807. 



February 28. 



63 



February 29. 

Enough that blessings undeserved 

Have marked my erring track ; — 

That whereso'er my feet have swerved, 
His chastening turned me back ; — 

That more and more a Providence 

Of love is understood, 
Making the springs of time and sense 

Sweet with eternal good ; — 

That care and trial seem at last, 
Through Memory's sunset air. 

Like mountain-ranges overpast, 
In purple distance fair ; — 

That all the jarring notes of life 

Seem blending in a psalm, 
And all the angles of its strife 

Slow rounding into calm. 

And so the shadows fall apart, 
And so the west-winds play ; 

And all the windows of my heart 

I open to the day. My Psalm. 



64 



February 29. 



65 



THE FROST SPIRIT. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Sph'it comes ! 

— from the frozen Labrador, — 

From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which 
the white bear wanders o'er, — 

Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the 
luckless forms below 

In the sunless cold of the lingering night into mar- 
ble statues grow ! 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes ! 

— let us meet him as we may. 

And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil 
power away ; 

And gather closer the circle round, when that fire- 
light dances high, 

And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his 
sounding wing goes by 1 



66 



a^^rcfj* 



THE NEW HOME. 

A WILD and broken landscape, spiked with iirs, 

Roughening the bleak horizon's northern edge, 
Steep, cavernous hillsides, where black hemlock 
spurs 
And sharp, gray splinters of the wind-swept 
ledge 
Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bristling rose, 
Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down upon 
the snows. 

And eastward cold, wide marshes stretched away, 
Dull, dreary flats without a bush or tree, 

O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a day 
Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck sea ; 

And faint with distance cam.e the stifled roar. 

The melancholy lapse of waves on that low shore. 



67 



March i. 

Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward 

far and fast 
The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of 

the past. 
But human hearts remain unchanged : the sorrow 

and the sin, 
The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to our 

own akin ; 
And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs our 

mothers sung, 

Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance is always 

young. Mary Garvin. 
« 

March 2. 

I looked : aside the dust-cloud rolled, — 

The Waster seemed the Builder too ; 
Up springing from the ruined Old 
I saw the New. 

The grain grew green on battle-plains, 

O'er swarded war-mounds grazed the cow j 
The slave stood forging from his chains 
The spade and plow. 

Where frowned the fort, pavilions gay 

And cottage windows, flower-entwined. 
Looked out upon the peaceful bay 

And hills behind. The Reformer. 

68 



March i. 

William D. Howells, 1837. 



March 2. 

Reconstruction Act, 1867. 



69 



March 3. 

To the gray walls of fallen Paraclete, 

To Juliet's urn, 
Fair Arno and Sorrento's orange-grove, 
Where Tasso sang, let young Romance and Love 

Like brother pilgrims turn. 

But here a deeper and serener charm 

To all is given ; 
And blessed memories of the faithful dead 
O'er wood and vale and meadow-stream have shed 

The holy hues of Heaven ! 

Chalkley Hall. 
« 

March 4. 

The flora of the mystic mine-world 
Around me lifts on crystal stems 
The petals of its clustered gems ! 

The Pageant. 

And where the dark shaft pierces down 
Beneath the mountain roots, 

Seen by the miner's lamp alone. 
The star-like crystal shoots ; 
So, where, the winds and waves below, 
The coral -branched gardens grow. 
His climbing weeds and mosses show, 
Like foliage, on each stony bough, 
Of varied hues more strangely gay 
Than forest leaves in autumn's day. 

To A. K. 
70 



March 3. 

Thomas Chalkley, 1675 ; Edmund Waller, 1605. 



March 4. 

Louis F. De Pourtales, 1824. 



71 



March 5. 

Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. 

George's bank, — 
Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog lies white 

and dank. Massachusetts to Virginia. 

To the young invalid of the Skipper's story, the 
dreary waste of what Moore calls, as you remem- 
ber, "The dismal shore 

Of cold and pitiless Labrador," 

looked beautiful and inviting ; for he saw it soft- 
ened and irradiated in an atmosphere of love. Its 
bare hills, bleak rocks, and misty sky were but the 
setting and background of the sweetest picture in 
the gallery of life. Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

« 

March 6. 

Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be 
chiselled from marble or wrought out on canvas, 
speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, 
what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all ? 
The heart feels a beauty of another kind ; looking 
through the outward environment, it discovers a 
deeper and more real loveliness. The Beautiful. 

An inborn grace that nothing lacked 

Of culture or appliance, — 
The warmth of genial courtesy, 
The calm of self-reliance. 

Among the Hills. 
72 



March 5. 

Isaac I. Hayes, 1832 ; James Madison, 1751. 



March 6. 

Michael Angelo Buonarotti, 1475 ; Gerrit Smith, 1797. 



73 



March 7. 

Such was our friend. Formed on the good old 

plan, 
A true and brave and downright honest man ! — 
He blew no trumpet in the market-place, 
Nor in the church with hypocritic face 
Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace ; 
Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will 
What others talked of while their hands were still ; 
And, while "Lord, Lord ! " the pious tyrants cried. 
Who, in the poor, their Master crucified. 
His daily prayer, far better understood 
In acts than words, was simply doing good. 

Daniel Neall. 



March 8. 

She bore him to a pleasant room, 

Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air, 

And watched beside his bed, fpr whom 
His far-off sisters might not care. 

She fanned his feverish brow and smoothed 
Its lines of pain with tenderest touch. 

With holy hymn and prayer she soothed 
The trembling soul that feared so much. 

Through her the peace that passeth sight 
Came to him, as he lapsed away 

As one whose troubled dreams of night 
Slide slowly into tranquil day. 

I WAS A Stranger and ye took me In. 

74 



March 7. 

Francis Jackson, 1789. 



March 8. 

Emily E. Parsons, 1834. 



75 



March 9. 

To weary hearts, to moxirning homes, 
God's meekest Angel gently comes : 
No power has he to banish pain, 
Or give us back our lost again ; 
And yet in tenderest love, our dear 
And Heavenly Father sends him here. 

There 's quiet in that Angel's glance, 

There 's rest in his still countenance ! 

He mocks no grief with idle cheer, 

Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear ; 

But ills and woes he may not cure 

He kindly trains us to endure. 

The Angel of Patience. 



March 10. 

Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and Faith, 
Smile dimly on us through their tears. 

FOLLEN. 

And that cloud itself, which now before thee 

Lies dark in view, 
Shall with beams of light from the inner glory 

Be stricken through. 

And like meadow mist through autumn's dawn 

Uprolling thin, 
Its thickest folds when about thee drawn 

Let sunlight in. My Soul and I. 

1^ 



March 9. 



March 10. 



n 



March ii. 

On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal, . 
The white, clear light, tradition-colored, stole 
Through the stained oriel of each human soul. 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 



So the man be a man, let him worship, at will. 
In Jerusalem's courts, or on Gerizim's hill. 
When she makes up her jewels, what cares yon 

good town 
For the Baptist of Wayland, the Quaker of 

Brown .'* The Quaker Alumni. 



March 12. 

Three shades at this moment seem walking her 

strand, 
Each with head halo-crowned, and with palms in 

his hand, — 
Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, smiling serene 
On prelate and puritan, Channing is seen. 

One holy name bearing, no longer they need 
Credentials of party, and pass-words of creed ; 
The new song they sing hath a threefold accord, 
And they own one baptism, one faith, and one 
Lord ! The Quaker Alumni. 



78 



March n. 

Francis Wayland, 1796, 



March 12. 

Bishop Berkeley, 1684. 



79 



March 13. 

It is no light thing to abandon one's own coun- 
try and household gods. City of a Day. 

The hills are dearest which our childish feet 
Have climbed the earliest ; and the streams most 

sweet 
Are ever those at which our young lips drank, 
Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy bank : 
Midst the cold dreary sea-watch, Home's hearth- 
light 
Shines round the helmsman plunging through the 

night ; 
And still, with inward eye, the traveller sees 
In close, dark, stranger streets his native trees. 

The Bridal of Pennacook. 
• 

March 14. 

Even in our own country and time old supersti- 
tions and credulities still cling to life with feline 
tenacity. Charms and Fairy Faith. 

Fringed with gold their mantles flow 
On the slopes of westering knolls ; 

In the wind they whisper low 
Of the Sunset Land of Souls. 

Doubt who may, O friend of mine ! 

Thou and I have seen them too ; 

On before with beck and sign 

Still they glide, and we pursue. 

The Vanishers. 
80 



March 13. 

Joseph Priestley, 1733. 



March 14. 



Si 



March 15. 

A grave, strong man, who knew no peer 
In the pilgrim land, where he ruled in fear 
Of God, not man, and for good or ill 
Held his trust with an iron will. 

The King's Missive. 

Who knows what goadings in their sterner way 
O'er jagged ice, relieved by granite gray, 
Blew round the men of Massachusetts Bay ? 

What hate of heresy the east-wind woke ? 
What hints of pitiless power and terror spoke 
In waves that on their iron coast-line broke ? 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 



March 16. 

Enough for me to feel and know 
That He in whom the cause and end, 
The past and future, meet and blend, — 
Who, girt with his immensities, 
Our vast and star-hung system sees. 
Small as the clustered Pleiades, — 
Moves not alone the heavenly quires, 
But waves the spring-time's grassy spires, 
Guards not archangel feet alone. 
But deigns to guide and keep my own. 

Questions of Life. 

82 



March 15. 

Governor Eiidicott (d ), 1665 ; Andrew Jackson, 1767. 



March i6. 

Caroline L. Herschel, 1750. 



83 



March 17. 

When the noblest woman in all France stood on 
the scaffold, just before her execution, she is said 
to have turned towards the statue of Liberty, — 
which, strangely enough, had been placed near the 
guillotine, as its patron saint, — with the exclama- 
tion, " O Liberty ! what crimes have been com- 

mitted in thy name ! " 

Portraits and Sketches. 

Pile up thy tombs of rank and pride, 
O England, as thou wilt ! 

No part or lot in these we claim ; 

But, o'er the sounding wave, 
A common right to Elliott's name, 

A freehold in his grave ! 
— « — 

March 18. 

A morning dream, a tale that 's told, 
The wave of change o'er all has rolled. 

The Chapel of the Hermits. 

But fresh and green from the rotting roots 
Of primal forests the young growth shoots ; 

" On the ladder of God, which upward leads, 
The steps of progress are human needs. 
For his judgments still are a mighty deep, 
And the eyes of his providence never sleep. 

The Preacher. 
84 



March 17. 

Madame Roland, 1754; Ebenezer Elliott, 1781. 



March i8. 

Francis Lieber, 1800. 



85 



March 19. 

The eye may well be glad, that looks 

Where Pharpar's fountains rise and fall ; 
But he who sees his native brooks 

Laugli in the sun, has seen them all. 
The marble palaces of Ind 
Rise round him in the snow and wind ; 
From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles, 
And Rome's cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles. 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 



March 20. 

The rudiments of empire here 

Are plastic yet and warm ; 
The chaos of a mighty world 

Is rounding into form ! 
On receiving an Eagle's Quill from Lake Superior. 

With the memory of that morning by the summer 

sea I blend 
A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather 

penned. 
In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange 

and marvellous things. 
Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos 

Ovid sings. The Garrison of Cape Ann. 



86 



March 19. 

David Livingstone, 1817. 



March 20. 

Ovid, 43 B. c. 



87 



March 21. 

He was one of those men to whom it is given to 
discern through the mists of custom and prejudice 
something of the lineaments of absolute truth, .... 
Introduction to Woolman's Journal. 

Truth which the sage and prophet saw, 
Long sought without, but found within, 

The Law of Love beyond all law, 

The Life o'erflooding mortal death and sin ! 

Shine on us with the light which glowed 
Upon the trance-bound shepherd's way, 

Who saw the Darkness overflowed • 

And drowned by tides of everlasting Day. 

The Shadow and the Light. 



March 22. 

The Traveller said : " If songs have creeds, 

Their choice of them let singers make ; 
But Art no other sanction needs 

Than beauty for its own fair sake. 
It grinds not in the mill of use. 
Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse ; 
It makes the flexile laws it deigns to own, 
And gives its atmosp.here its color and its tone." 

The Tent on the Beach. 

88 



March 21. 

Departure of George Fox from America, 1673. 



March 22. 

Philip Vandyck, 1599; Rosa Bonheur, 1822. 



89 



March 23. 

O friend ! O brother ! not in vain 

Thy life so calm and true, 
The silver dropping of the rain, 

The fall of summer dew ! 

How many burdened hearts have prayed 
Their lives like thine might be ! 

But more shall pray henceforth for aid 
To lay them down like thee. 

With weary hand, yet steadfast will, 

In old age as in youth, 
Thy Master found thee sowing still 

The good seed of his truth. 

To William Forster. 



March 24. 

A mind rejoicing in the light 

Which melted through its graceful bower, 
Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright, 
And stainless in its holy white, 
Unfolding like a morning flower : 
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute, 

With every breath of feeling woke. 
And, even when the tongue was mute, 

From eye and lip in music spoke. 

Memories, 
90 



March 23. 

William Forster, 1784. 



March 24. 



91 



March 25. 

We share our primal parents' fate, 

And in our turn and day, 
Look back on Eden's sworded gate 

As sad and lost as they. 

But still for us his native skies 

The pitying Angel leaves, 
And leads through Toil to Paradise 

New Adams and new Eves ! 

A Lay of Old Time. 

O, backward-looking son of time ! 
The new is old, the old is new. 

The Reformer. 
♦ 

March 26. 

"One cannot but admire," said the Doctor, 
"that wise and beneficent ordination of Providence 
whereby the spirit of man asserts its power over 
circumstances." Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

Not untrue that tale of old ! 
Now, as then, the wise and bold 
All the powers of Nature hold 

Subject to their kingly will ; 
From the wondering crowds ashore, 
Treading life's wild waters o'er, 
As upon a marble floor, 

Moves the strong man still. 

The Bridal of Pennacook. 
92 



March 25. 



March 26. 

Nathaniel Bowditch, 1773. 



93 



March 27. 

The fox his hillside cell forsakes, 

The muskrat leaves his nook, 
The bluebird in the meadow brakes 
Is singing with the brook. 
" Bear up, O Mother Nature ! " cry 
Bird, breeze, and streamlet free ; 
" Our winter voices prophesy 
Of summer days to thee ! " 

A Dream of Summer. 



March 28. 

Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, 
His black cap hiding his whitened hair, 
Walks the Judge of the great Assize, 
Samuel Sewall the good and wise. 
His face with lines of firmness wrought. 
He wears the look of a man unbought, 
Who swears to his hurt and changes not ; 

True and tender and brave and just, 
That man might honor and woman trust. 

Green forever the memory be 
Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, 
Whom even his errors glorified. 
Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side 
By the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide ! 
The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall. 

94 



March 27. 



March 28. 

Samuel Sewall, 1652 ; Thomas Clarkson, 1760. 



95 



March 29. 

Nature's mighty miracle is still over and around 
us ; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain 
to be the inheritance of humanity. 

The Agency of Evil. 

Around the mighty master came 

The marvels which his pencil wrought, 

Those miracles of power whose fame 
Is wide as human thought. 

There drooped thy more than mortal face, 

O Mother, beautiful and mild ! 
Enfolding in one dear embrace 

Thy Saviour and thy Child ! Raphael. 



March 30. 

Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown 

Question us now from star and stone ; 

Too little or too much v^^e know, 

And sight is swift and faith is slow ; 

The power is lost to self-deceive 

With shallow forms of make-believe. 

We walk at high noon, and the bells 

Call to a thousand oracles. The Meeting. 

Within its round of sea and sky and field, 
Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos stands 
revealed. The Last Walk in Autumn. 

96 



March 29. 

Raffaello Sanzio, 1483. 



March 30. 



97 



March 31. 

You should have seen that long hill-range 
With gaps of brightness riven, — 

How through each pass and hollow streamed 
The purpling lights of heaven, — 

Rivers of gold-mist flowing down 

From far celestial fountains, — 
The great sun flaming through the rifts 

Beyond the wall of mountains ! 

Among the Hills. 

The glory of this sunset heaven 

Into my soul has passed, — 
A sense of gladness unconfined 

To mortal date or clime ; 
As the soul liveth, it shall live 

Beyond the years of time. 
Beside the mystic asphodels 

Shall bloom the home-born flowers, 
And new horizons flush and glow 

With sunset hues of ours. 

Sunset on the Bearcamp, 



98 



March 31. 

William M. Hunt, 1824; John P. Hale, 1806. 



99 



BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 

The wild March rains had fallen fast and long 
The snowy mountains of the North among, 
Making each vale a watercourse, — each hill 
Bright with the cascade of some new-made rill. 

Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by the rain, 
Heaved underneath by the swollen current's strain, 
The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merrimack 
Bore the huge ruin crashing down its track. 

Down the white rapids like a sear leaf whirled. 
On the sharp rocks and piled-up ices hurled, 
Empty and broken, circled the canoe 
In the vexed pool below — but, where was Weeta- 
moo ? 



100 



3l!pra. 



" The spring comes slowly up this way." 

Christabel. 

*T IS the noon of the spring-time, yet never a bird 
In the wind-shaken ehii or the maple is heard ; 
For green meadow-grasses wide levels of snow, 
And blowing of drifts where the crocus should 

blow ; 
Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white. 
On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the 

light, 
O'er the cold winter-beds of their late-waking roots 
The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots ; 
And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps, 
Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel 

creeps, 
Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers. 
With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst 

into flowers ! 
We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south ! 
For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy 

mouth ; 
For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God, 
Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod ! 



loi 



April i. 

A laugh which in the woodland rang 
Bemocking April's gladdest bird, — 

A light and graceful form which sprang 
To meet him w'hen his step was heard- 
The Bridal of Pennacook. 

Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower, 

Nor green earth's virgin sod, 
So moved the singer's heart of old 

As these small ones of God. 

Child Songs. 



April 2. 

The nursling growth of Monticello's crest 
Is now the glory of the free Northwest ; 
To the wise maxims of her olden school 
Virginia listened from thy lips, Rantoul ; 
Seward's words of power, and Sumner's fresh re- 
nown, 
Flow from the pen that Jefferson laid down ! 

The Panorama. 

For democracy, pure and impartial, — the self- 
government of the whole ; equal rights and privi- 
leges, irrespective of birth or complexion ; . . . . 
Christianity reduced to practice, and showering the 
blessings of its impartial love and equal protection 
upon all, like the rain and dews of heaven, — we 
have the sincerest love and reverence. 

William Leggett. 
102 



April i. 



April 2. 

Thomas Jefferson, 1743; Hans Christian Andersen, 1805. 



103 



April 3. 

Through winter's moss and dry dead leaves 
The bladed grass revives and lives. 
Pushes the mouldering waste away, 
And glimpses to the April day. 

MoGG Megonh. 

I know not how, in other lands, 

The changing seasons come and go ; 
What splendors fall on Syrian sands, 

What purple lights on Alpine snow ! 
Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits 
On Venice at her watery gates ; 
A dream alone to me is Arno's vale, 
And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveller's tale. 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 
♦ 

April 4. 

What was John Woolman, to the wise and pru- 
dent of his day, but an amiable enthusiast ? What, 
to those of our own, is such an angel of mercy as 
Dorothea Dix ? Fame and Glory. 

O weary ones ! ye may not see 

Your helpers in their downward flight ; 

Nor hear the sound of silver wings 

Slow beating through the hush of night ! 
The Legend of St. Mark. 

Through prison walls, like Heaven-sent hope, 
Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams strayed. 

The Reformer. 
104 



April 3. 

Washington Irving, 1783 ; George Herbert, 1593. 



April 4. 

D. L. Dix; Benjamin Pierce, 1809. 



105 



April 5. 

The home-sick dreamer's brow is nightly fanned 
By breezes whispering of his native land, 
And on the stranger's dim and dying eye 
The soft, sweet pictures of his childhood lie. 

The Bridal of Pennacook. 

O, they listened, dumb and breathless, 
And they caught the sound at last ; 
Faint and far beyond the Goomtee 

Rose and fell the piper's blast ! 
Then a burst of wild thanksgiving 
Mingled woman's voice and man's ; 
" God be praised ! — the march of Havelock ! 
The piping of the clans ! " 

The Pipes at Lucknow. 



April 6. 

Not as a poor requital of the joy 

With which my childhood heard that lay of 
thine, 

Which, like an echo of the song divine 
At Bethlehem breathed above the Holy Boy, 

Bore to my ear the Airs of Palestine, — 

Not to the poet, but the man I bring 

In friendship's fearless trust my offering : 

How much it lacks I feel, and thou wilt see, 

Yet well I know that thou hast deemed with me 

Life all too earnest, and its time too short 

For dreamy ease and Fancy's graceful sport. 

To J. P 

106 



April 5. 

Sir Henry Havelock, 1795, 



April 6. 

John Pierpont, 1785. 



107 



April 7. 

The violet by its mossy stone, 
The primrose by the river's brim, 

And chance-sown daffodil, have found 
Immortal life through him. 

The sunrise on his breezy lake, 
The rosy tints his sunset brought. 

World-seen, are gladdening all the vales 
And mountain-peaks of thought. 

Wordsworth. 

Not vainly did old poets tell, 
Nor vainly did old genius paint 

God's great and crowning miracle, — 
The hero and the saint ! 

For even in a faithless day 

Can we our sainted ones discern ; 

And feel, while with them on the way, 
Our hearts within us burn. Channing. 



April 8. 

I mourn no more my vanished years : 

Beneath a tender rain. 
An April rain of smiles and tears, 

My heart is young again. 

The west-winds blow, and, singing low, 
I hear the glad streams run ; 

The windows of my soul I throw 

Wide open to the sun. Mv Psalm. 

108 



April 7. 

William Wordsworth, 1770; William E. Channing, 1780. 



April 8. 



109 



April 9. 

All lovely things, by thee beloved, 

Shall whisper to our hearts of thee ; 
These green hills, where thy childhood roved, ■ 

Yon river winding to the sea, — 
The sunset light of autumn eves 

Reflecting on the deep, still floods, 
Clouds, crimson sky, and trembling leaves 

Of rainbow-tinted woods, — 

These, in our view, shall henceforth take 

A tenderer meaning for thy sake. 

Lucy Hooper 



April 10. 

The years no charm from Nature take ; 

As sweet her voices call, 
As beautiful her mornings break. 

As fair her evenings fall. 

Love watches o'er my quiet ways, 

Kind voices speak my name, 
And lips that find it hard to praise 

Are slow, at least, to blame. 

How softly ebb the tides of will ! 

How fields, once lost or won. 
Now lie behind me green and still 

Beneath a level sun ! My Birthday. 

no 



April 9. 



April 10. 



Ill 



April ii. 

Deeper than the gilded surface 
Hath thy wakeful vision seen, 

Farther than the narrow present 
Have thy journeyings been. 

Thou hast midst Life's empty noises 
Heard the solemn steps of Time, 

And the low mysterious voices 

Of another clime. To - 



But life shall on and upward go ; 

Th' eternal step of Progress beats 
To that great anthem, calm and slow, 

Which God repeats. The Reforjier. 

•— 

April 12. 

The first drawn blood of Freedom's veins 

Gushed where ye tread ; 
Lo ! throu2;h the dusk the martvr-stains 

Blush darkly red ! 

Beneath the slowly waning stars 

And whitening day. 
What stern and awful presence bars 

That sacred way ? 

What faces frown upon ye, dark 

With shame and pain ? 
.Come these from Ph'mouth's Pilgrim bark ? 
Is that young Vane ? 

Moloch in State Street. 
112 



April ii. 

Samuel May, 1810. 



April 12. 

Rendition of Thomas M. Simms, 1851. 



113 



April 13. 

" Now, why from yon battlements 
Speaks not my love ! 
Why waves there no banner 
My fortress above ? " 

• •••••* 

" Of its sturdy defenders, 
Thy lady alone 
Saw the cross-blazoned banner 
Float over St. John." 

St. John. 



April 14. 

The sweet spring day is clad with music, 
But through it sounds a sadder strain ; 

The worthiest of our narrowing circle 
Sings Loring's dirges o'er again. 

Why on this spring air comes no whisper 
From him to tell us all is well ? 

Why to our flower-time comes no token 
Of lily and of asphodel .-* 

I feel the unutterable longing, 

Thy hunger of the heart is mine ; 
I reach and grope for hands in darkness, 
My ear grows sharp for voice or sign. 

To Lydia Maria Child. 
114 



April 13. 

Defence of her Fortress by Lady La Tour, 1645, 



April 14. 

Ellis Gray Loring, 1S03. 



115 



April 15. 

Burning, yet cold and drear and lone, — 
A fire-mount in a frozen zone ! 

Like that the gray-haired sea-king passed, 
Seen southward from his sleety mast, 
About whose brows of changeless frost 
A wreath of flame the wild winds tossed. 

The Chapel of the Hermits. 

Wherever love goes, there springs the true 
hearfs-ease, rooting itself even in the polar ices. 
My Summer with Dr. Singletary. 



April 16. 

Sad it is the mournful yew-tree 
O'er his slumbers may not wave ; 

Sad it is the English daisy 

May not blossom on his grave. 

But his tomb shall storm and winter 
Shape and fashion year by year, 

Pile his mighty mausoleum, 
Block by block, and tier on tier. 

Lady Franklin. 

The old voice filled the air ! His last brave word 

Not vainly France to all her boundaries stirred. 

Strong as in life, he still for Freedom wrought. 

As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought. 

Thiers 

1X6 



April 15. 

Sir James C. Ross, 1800; John Lothrop Motley, 1814. 



April i6. 

Sir John Franklin, 1786; Louis Adolphe Thiers, 1797. 



117 



April 17. 

So spake Esaias : so, in words of flame, 
Tekoa's prophet-herdsman smote with blame 
The traffickers in men. 

Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our years 
The solemn burdens of the Orient seers, 
And smite with truth a guilty nation's ears. 

Mightier was Luther's word 
Than Seckingen's mailed arm or Hutton's sword ! 

To G. B. C. 



April 18. 

Yes, let them come ! from each green vale 
Where England's old baronial halls 
Still bear upon their storied walls 

The grim crusader's rusted mail, 

Battered by Paynim spear and brand 

On Malta's rock or Syria's sand ! 

And mouldering pennon-staves once set . 
Within the soil of Palestine, 

By Jordan and Genes are t ; 

Or, borne with England's battle line, 

O'er Acre's shattered turrets stooping, 

A holier summons now is given 

Than that gray hermit's voice of old. 
Which unto all the winds of heaven 
The banners of the Cross unrolled ! 

The World's Convention. 
IlS 



April 17. 

George B. Cheever, 1807. 



April i8. 

George William Frederick Howard, Earl of Carlisle, 1802. 



119 



April 19. 

Swift as their summons came they left 
The plow mid-furrow standing still, 
The half-ground corn grist in the mill, 

The spade in earth, the axe in cleft. 

Lexington. 

The Puritan Spirit perishing not, 

To Concord's yeomen the signal sent, 
And spake in the voice of the cannon-shot 
That severed the chains of a continent. 
With its gentler mission of peace and good-wiU 
The thought of the Quaker is living still, 
And the freedom of soul he prophesied 
Is gospel and law where the martyrs died. 

The King's Missive 



April 20. 

Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the day 
From Pennsylvania's vales of spring away, 
Where, forest-walled, the scattered hamlets lay 

Along the wedded rivers. One long bar 
Of purple cloud, on which the evening star 
Shone like a jewel on a scimitar. 

Held the sky's golden gateway. Through the deep 
Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to creep, 
The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of sleep. 

The Pennsylvania Pilgkiaj 
120 



April 19. 

Lexington and Concord, 1775 ; Roger Sherman, 1721. 



April 20. 

William H. Furness, 1802; Henry T. Tiickerman, 1813. 



121 



April 21. 

Talk not to me of woman's sphere, 
Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer, 
Nor wrong the manliest saint of all 
By doubt, if he were here, that Paul 
Would own the heroines who have lent 
Grace to truth's stern arbitrament, 
Foregone the praise to woman sweet, 
And cast their crowns at Duty's feet. 

Lines on a Fly-Leaf. 

O friends whose hearts still keep their prime, 

Whose bright example warms and cheers, 
V'e teach us how to smile at Time, 
And set to music all his years ! 

The Laurels. 
♦ 

April 22. 

Falsehoods which we spurn to-day 
Were the truths of long ago ; 

Let the dead boughs fall away, 
Fresher shall the living grow. 

Calef in Boston. 

The pilgrim needs a pass no more 

From Roman or Genevan ; 
Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps 
Henceforth the road to Heaven ! 

A Sp\ritual Manifestation. 
122 



April 21. 



April 22. 

James Freeman, 1759 



123 



April 23. 

" Human life," he would say, " is the same every- 
where. If we could but get at the truth, we should 
find that all the tragedy and comedy of Shake- 
speare have been reproduced in this little village. 
God has made all of one blood ; what is true of 
one man is in some sort true of another ; manifes- 
tations may differ, but the essential elements and 
springs of action are the same." 

My Summer with Dr. Singletarv. 



April 24. 

And still the Pilgrim State remains 

What she hath been ; 
Her inland hills, her seaward plains. 

Still nurture men ! 

Nor wholly lost the fallen mart, — 

Her olden blood 
Through many a free and generous heart 

Still pours its flood. 

Even now, the peal of bell and gun. 

And hills aflame, 
Tell of the first great triumph won 
In Freedom's name. 

Moloch in State Street 
124 



April 23. 

Shakespeare, 1564. 



April 24. 

Election of Charles Sumner to the U. S. Senate, 1851. 



125 



April 25. 

The English revolution of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, while it humbled the false and oppressive 
aristocracy of rank and title, was prodigal in the 
development of the real nobility of the mind and 
heart. Its history is bright with the footprints of 
men whose very names still stir the hearts of free- 
men, the world over, like a trumpet peal. Say 
what we may of its fanaticism, laugh as we may 
at its extravagant enjoyment of newly acquired re- 
ligious and civil liberty, who shall now venture to 
deny that it was the golden age of England .'' 

John Bunyan. 
• 

April 26. 

Her dark, dilating eyes expressed 

The broad horizons of the west ; 

Her speech dropped prairie flowers ; the gold 

Of harvest wheat about her rolled. 

• ••*•••• • 

Again the blackbirds sing ; the streams 
Wake, laughing, from their wdnter dreams, 
And tremble in the April showers 
The tassels of the maple flowers. 

But not for her has spring renewed 
The sweet surprises of the wood ; 
And bird and flower are lost to her 
Who was their best interpreter ! The Singer. 

126 



April 25. 

Oliver Cromwell, 1599; John Keble, 1792. 



April 26. 

Alice Gary, 1820; John Louis Uhland, 1787. 



127 



April 27. 

Type of two mighty continents ! — combining 
The strength of Europe with the warmth and 
glow 
Of Asian song and prophecy, — the shining 
Of Orient splendors over Northern snow ! 

To Kossuth. 

" Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain 
And Asian mountains borne, 
The vigor of the Northern brain 
Shall nerve the world outworn. 

" From clime to clime, from shore to shore, 
Shall thrill the magic thread ; 
The new Prometheus steals once more 
The fire that wakes the dead." 

The Tent on the Beach. 



April 28. 

Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, 
A minster rich in holy effigies, 
And bearing on entablature and frieze 

The hieroglyphic oracles of old. 

Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit ; 

And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint 
The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint, 

Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ ! 

The Book, 

128 



April 27. 

Louis Kossuth, 1806; Samuel F. B. Morse, ijgi. 



April 28. 

Ezra Abbot, 1S19; James iMonroe, 1758. 



129 



April 29. 

It is the voice of the pines yonder, — a sort of 
morning song of praise to the Giver of life and 
Maimer of beauty. My Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

Thanks, Mary ! for this wild wood token 
Of Freya's footsteps drawing near ; 

Almost, as in the rune of Asgard, 
The growing of the grass I hear. 

It is as if the pine-trees called me 
From ceiled room and silent books, 

To see the dance of woodland shadows, 

And hear the song of April brooks ! 

First Flowers. 
« 

April 30. 

On yonder rocky cape, which braves 
The stormy challenge of the waves. 
Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood, 
The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood. 
Planting upon the topmost crag 
The staff of England's battle-flag ; 
And, while from out its heavy fold 
Saint George's crimson cross unrolled, 

He gave to that lone promontory 
The sweetest name in all his story ; 
Of her, the flower of Islam's daughters. 
Whose harems look on Stamboul's waters. 

TijE Merrimack. 
130 



April 29. 



April 30. 

Arrival of Capt. John Smith in New England, 1614. 



131 



THE TRAILING ARBUTUS. 

I WANDERED lonely where the pine-trees made 
Against the bitter East their barricade, 

And, guided by its sweet 
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell. 
The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell 

Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet. 

» 

From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines 
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines 

Lifted their glad surprise, 
While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees 
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze, 

And snow-drifts lingered under April skies. 

As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent, 

I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent, 

Which yet find room. 
Through care and cumber, coldness and decay, 
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day 

And make the sad earth happier for their bloom. 



132 



L. 



^ap. 



THE MAYFLOWERS. 

The trailins; arbutus, or mayflower, grows abundantly in 
the vicinity of Plymouth, and was the first flower that greeted 
the Pilgrims after their fearful winter. 

Sad Mayflower ! watched by winter stars, 

And nursed by winter gales, 
With petals of the sleeted spars, 

And leaves of frozen sails I 

What had she in those dreary hours. 

Within her ice-rimmed bay, 
In common with the wild-wood flowers, 

The first sweet smiles of May .'' 

Yet, " God be praised ! " the Pilgrim said, 

Who saw the blossoms peer 
Above the brown leaves, dry and dead, 

" Behold our Mayflov/er here ! " 

" God wills it : here our rest shall be. 
Our years of wandering o'er, 
For us the Mayflower of the sea 
Shall spread her sails no more." 

133 



May I. 

That loud controversy, the sound whereof went 
over Christendom, awakening responses from be- 
yond the Atlantic, has now died away ; its watch- 
words no longer stir the blood of belligerent ser- 
monizers ; its very terms and definitions have 
well-nigh become obsolete and unintelligible. The 
hands which wrote and the tongues which spoke 
in that day are now all cold and silent ; even Em- 
mons, the brave old intellectual athlete of Frank- 
lin, now sleeps with his fathers, — the last of the 

giants. Samuel Hopkins. 

• 

May 2. 

I, who have spoken for freedom at the cost 
Of some weak friendships, or some paltry prize 
Of name or place, and more than I have lost 
Have gained in wider reach of sympathies. 
And free communion with the good and wise, — 
May God forbid that I should ever boast 
Such easy self-denial, or repine 
That the strong pulse of health no more is mine. 

Nor lack I friends, long-tried and near and dear, 
Whose love is round me like this atmosphere, 
Warm, soft, and golden. Prisoners of Naples. 



134 



May I. 

Nathaniel Emmons, 1745; Joseph Addison, 1672. 



May 2. 

John Gorham Palfrey, 1796. 



135 



May 3. 

The vales shall laugh in flowers, the woods 
Grow misty green with leafing buds, 
And violets and wind-flowers sway. 
Against the throbbing heart of May. 

The Clear Vision. 

" I love you : on that love alone, 
And not my worth, presuming, 
"Will you not trust for summer fruit 
The tree in May-day blooming ? " 

Alone the hangbird overhead. 
His hair-swung cradle straining. 

Looked down to see love's miracle, — 
The giving that is gaining. 

Among the Hills. 
♦ 

May 4. 

Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb, 

Beneath Besangon's alien sky, 
And men shall learn to speak of thee, 
As one of earth's great spirits, born 
In servitude, and nursed in scorn, 
Casting aside the weary weight 
And fetters of its low estate, 
In that strong majesty of soul 

Which knows no color, tongue, or clime, - 
Which still hath spurned the base control 

Of tyrants through all time ! 

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE, 



May 3. 



May 4. 

Toussaint joins the French, 1794. 



^Z7 



May 5. 

The years are many since, in youth and hope, 

Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope 

We drew thick-studded with all favoring stars. 

• •••••••a 

Alike we loved 
The muses' haunts, and all our fancies moved 
To measures of old song. How since that day 
Our feet have parted from the path that lay 
So fair before us ! Rich, from lifelong search 
Of truth, within thy Academic porch 
Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact, 
Thy servitors the sciences exact. 

To Frederick A. P. Barnard. 



May 6. 



And all about the softening air 

Of new-born sweetness tells, 
And the ungathered May-flowers wear 

The tints of ocean shells. 

The old, assuring miracle 

Is fresh as heretofore ; 
And earth takes up its parable 

Of life from death once more. 

Here organ-swell and church-bell toll 
Methinks but discord were, — 

The prayerful silence of the soul 

Is best befitting her. Friend's Burial 



May 5. 

Frederick A. P. Barnard, iSog 



May 6. 



139 



May 7. 

And what abundant cause for thanks have T, that 
I have been safely landed on a shore so fair and 
pleasant, and enabled to open mine eyes in peace 
and love on so sweet a May morning ! 

Margaret Smith's Journal. 

O, welcome calm of heart and mind ! 
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind 
To leave a tenderer growth behind, 

So fall the weary years away ; 
A child again, my head I lay 
Upon the lap of this sweet day. 

Summer by the Lakeside. 
* 

May 8. 

The snow of pearls I '11 scatter in your curls of 

golden hair, 
I '11 line with furs the velvet of the kirtle that you 

wear ; 
All precious gems shall twine your neck ; and in a 

chariot gay . 
You shall ride, my little Elsie, behind four steeds 

of gray. 

Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls around her 

garden -bower, 
But she is sweeter than the mint and fairer than 

the flower. King Volmer and Elsie. 

140 



May 7. 



May 8. 



141 



May 9. 

We cross the prairie as of old 
The pilgrims crossed the sea, 

To make ihe West, as they the East, 
The homestead of the free ! 

The Kansas Emigrants. 

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying 

day : 
" I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in 

Slavery's pay. 
But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven 

to free, 
With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a 

prayer for me ! " 

John Brown of Ossawatomie. 
♦ 

May 10. 

We follow where before us runs 
The vision of the shining ones. 

The Seeking of the Waterfall. 

Yet where our duty's task is wrought 
In unison with God's great thought. 
The near and future blend in one, 
And whatsoe'er is willed, is done ! 
And ours the grateful service whence 
Comes, day by day, the recompense ; 
The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed, 
The fountain and the noonday shade. 

Seedtime and Harvest. 
142 



May 9. 

John Brown, 1800. 



May 10. 

Jared Sparks, 1789. 



143 



May II. 

'T was night. The tranquil moonlight smile 

With which Heaven dreams of Earth, shed down 

Its beauty on the Indian isle, — 

On broad green field and white-walled town ; 

And inland waste of rock and wood, 

In searching sunshine, wild and rude, 

Rose, mellowed through the silver gleam, 

Soft as the landscape of a dream, 

All motionless and dewy wet, 

Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met. 

TOU^AINT L'OUVERTUKE. 



May 12. 

" And sweet and far, as from a star, 

Replied a voice which shall not cease. 
Till, drowning all the noise of war. 
It sings the blessed song of peace ! " 

So to me, in a doubtful day 

Of chill and slowly greening spring, 

Low stooping from the cloudy gray. 
The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing. 

They vanished in the misty air, 

The song went with them in their flight ; 
But lo ! they left the sunset fair. 
And in the evening there was light. 

What the Birds Said 
144 



May II. 



May 12. 

Robert C. Winthrop, 1809. 



145 



May 13. 

My lady walks her morning round, 
My lady's page her fleet greyhound, 
My lady's hair the fond winds stir, 
And all the birds make songs for her. 

Her thrushes sing in Rathburn bowers, 
And Rathburn side is gay with flowers ; 
But ne'er like hers, in flower or bird. 
Was l^eauty seen or music heard. 

The Henchman. 
« 

May 14. 

O for boyhood's painless play, 
Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 
Health that mocks the doctor's rules. 
Knowledge never learned of schools, 
Of the wild bee's morning chase. 
Of the wild-flower's time and place, 
Flight of fowl and habitude 
Of the tenants of the wood ; 
How the tortoise bears his shell 
How the woodchuck digs his cell. 
And the ground-mole sinks his well ; 
How the robin feeds her young, 
How the oriole's nest is hung ; 
Where the whitest lilies blow. 
Where the freshest berries grow ! 

The Barefoot Boy. 
146 



May 13. 



May 14. 



147 



May 15. 

Glory to God forever ! 

Beyond the despot's will 
The soul of Freedom liveth 

Imperishable still. 
The words which thou hast uttered 

Are of that soul a part, 
And the good seed thou hast scattered 

Is springing from the heart. 

We will think of thee, O brother ! 

And thy sainted name shall be 
In the blessing of the captive, 

And the anthem of the free. 

To Charles B. Storrs. 



May 16. 



Not vain the vision which the prophets saw. 
Skirting with green the fiery waste of war, 
Through the hot sand-gleam, looming soft and 

calm 
On the sky's rim, the fountain-shading palm. 
Still lives for Earth, which fiends so long have 

trod. 

The great hope resting on the truth of God, — 

Evil shall cease and Violence pass away. 

And the tired world breathe free through a long 

Sabbath day. To A. K. 

148 



May 15. 

Charles B. Storrs, 1794. 



May 16. 

William H. Seward, i8oi. 



149 



May 17. 

Relic of Freedom's shrine ! — a brand 
Plucked from its burning ! — let it be 

Dear as a jewel from the hand 
Of a lost friend to me ! — 

If leaflets from some hero's tomb, 

Or moss-wreath torn from ruins hoary, — 

Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom 
On fields renowned in story, — 

If it be true that things like these 
To heart and eye bright visions bring, 

Shall not far holier memories 
To this memorial cling ? The Relic. 



May 18. 

Home of my heart ! to me more fair 

Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls, 

The painted, shingly town-house where 

The freeman's vote for Freedom falls ! 

The simple roof where prayer is made. 

Than Gothic groin and colonnade ; 

The living temple of the heart of man, 

Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or many-spired 

Milan ! 

The Last Walk in Autumn. 



ICO 



May 17. 

Burning of Pennsylvania Hall, 1838. 



-• 



May 18. 

Samuel Hoar, 1778. 



151 



May 19. 

And there he stands in memory to this day, 
Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen 
Against the background of unnatural dark, 
A witness to the ages as they pass. 
That simple duty hath no place for fear. 

Abraham Davenport. 

Simple, cheerful faith in God as our great and 
good Father, and love of His children as our 
brethren, acted out in all relations and duties, is 
certainly best for this world, and we believe also 
the best preparation for that to come. 

Fanaticism. 

•— 

May 20. 

These children of the meadows, born 
Of sunshine and of showers ! 

How well the conscious wood retains 
The pictures of its flower-sown home, — 

The lights and shades, the purple stains, 
And golden hues of bloom ! 

It was a happy thought to bring 

To the dark season's frost and rime 
This painted memory of spring, 
This dream of summer-time. 

Flowers ik Winter, 
152 



May 19. 

Dark Day, 17S0; John Wilson, 17S5. 



May 20. 



153 



May 21. 

The old poet prophets, all the world over, have 
sung of a renovated world. A vision of it haunted 
the contemplations of Plato. The World's End. 

All the mystery of Being 

Hath upon thy spirit pressed, — 

Thoughts which, like the Deluge wanderer, 
Find no place of rest : 

That which mystic Plato pondered, 
That which Zeuo heard with awe, 

And the star-rapt Zoroaster 

In his night-watch saw. To 



May 22. 

Youthful years and maiden beauty, 
Joy with them should still abide, — 

Instinct take the place of Duty, 
Love, not Reason, guide. 

But upon thy youthful forehead 
Something like a shadow lies ; 

And a serious soul is looking 
From thy earnest eyes. 

With an early introversion. 

Through the forms of outward things. 
Seeking for the subtle essence, 

And the hidden springs. To 



May 21. 

Duchess of Sutherland, 1806; Elizabeth Fry, 1780; 
Plato, B. c. 429. 



May 22. 



155 



May 23, 

Hood, under all his whims and oddities, conceals 
the vehement intensity of a reformer. The iron of 
the world's wrongs had entered into his soul ; there 
is an undertone of sorrow in his lyrics. 

Mirth and Medicine. 



What matters it ! — a few years more, 
Life's surge so restless heretofore 
Shall break upon the unknown shore ! 



Before no work of mortal hand. 
Of human will or strength, expand 
The pearl gates of the Better Land. 

Lines written in the Book of a Friend. 



May 24. 

For ages on our river borders. 

These tassels in their tawny bloom, 
And willowy studs of downy silver. 
Have prophesied of Spring to come. 

First Flowers. 
At thy hour of noon, 
While life was pleasant to thy undimmed sight. 
And, day by day, within thy spirit grew 
A holier hope than young Ambition knew. 
As through thy rural quiet, not in vain, 
Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry of pain, 
Man of the millions, thou art lost too soon ! 

On the Death of Silas Wright. 
156 



May 23. 

Thomas Hood, 1798 ; Margaret Fuller Ossoli, i8io. 



May 34. 

Linnsus, 1707 ; Silas Wright, 1795. 



157 



May 25. 

Truth should be the first lesson of the child and 
the last aspiration of manhood ; for it has been 
well said that the inquiry of truth, which is the 
love-making of it, the knowledge of truth, which is 
the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is 
the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human 
nature. Charms and Fairy Faith. 

We search the world for truth ; we cull 
The good, the pure, the beautiful. 
From graven stone and written scroll, 
From all old flower-fields of the soul. 

Miriam. 

Beyond the poet's sweet dream lives 
Tlie eternal epic of the man. 

Tent on the Beacu. 



May 26. 

fias life's infancy only been provided for, and 
beyond this poor nursery-chamber of Time is there 
no play-ground for the soul's youth, no broad fields 
for its manhood .'' Scottish Reformers. 

*' Never fear ! 
For heaven is love, as God himself is love ; 
Thy work below shall be thy work above." 
And when he looked, lo ! in the stern monk's place 
He saw the shining of an angel's face ! 

The Brother of Mercy. 



May 25. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803. 



May 26. 

Joseph T. Buckminster, 1784. 



^'j9 



May 27. 

Before my soul a voice and vision passed, 
Such as might Milton's jarring trump require, 
Or glooms of Dante fringed with lurid fire. 

The Panorama. 

We shape ourselves the joy or fear 

Of which the coming life is made, 
And fill our Future's atmosphere 
With sunshine or with shade. 

Raphael. 
— -4 

May 28. 

wSaid the Master to the youth : 
*' We have come in search of truth, 
Trying with uncertain key 
Door by door of mystery ; 
We are reaching, through His laws, 
To the garment-hem of Cause." 
• ••••... 

As with fingers of the blind, 

We are groping here to find 

What the hieroglyphics mean 

Of the Unseen in the seen, 

What the Thought which underlies 

Nature's masking and disguise, 

What it is that hides beneath 

Blight and bloom and birth and death. 

Thb Prayer of Agassiz. 
160 



May 27. 

Dante AHghieri, 1265. 



May 28. 

Louis Agassiz, 1807. 



161 



May 29. 

Soft words, smooth prophecies, are doubtless well ; 
But to rebuke the age's popular crime, 
We need the souls of fire, the hearts of that old 
time ! The Men of Old. 

Earnest toil and strong endeavor 

Of a spirit which within 
Wrestles with familiar evil 

And besetting sin ; 

And without, with tireless vigor, 

Steady heart, and weapon strong. 
In the power of truth assailing 

Every form of v/rong. To . 

• 

May 30. 

And lo ! the fulness of the time has come. 
And over all the exile's Western home. 
From sea to sea the flowers of freedom bloom ! 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 

The garden rose may richly bloom 

In cultured soil and genial air 
To cloud the light of Fashion's room, 

Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair ; 
In lonelier grace, to sun and dew 

The sweetbrier on the hillside shows 
Its single leaf and fainter hue, 
Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose ! 

The Bridal of Pennacook. 
162 



May 29. 

Patrick Henry, 1736. 



May 30. 

Decoration Day. 



163 



May 31. 

We may regret that in this stage o£ the spirit's 
life tlie sincere and self-denying worker is not al- 
ways permitted to partake of the fruits of his toil 
or receive the honors of a benefactor. 

Scottish Reformers. 

He has done the work of a true man, — 
Crown him, honor him, love him. 

Weep over him, tears of woman. 
Stoop manliest brows above him ! 

No duty could overtask him, 

No need his will outrun ; 
Or ever our lips could ask him, 

His hands the work had done. 

To G. L. S 



1C4 



May 31. 

John A. Andrew, iSi8. 



1G5 



MY PLAYMATE. 

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 
Their song was soft and low ; 

The blossoms in the sweet May wind 
Were falling like the snow. 

The blossoms drifted at our feet, 
The orchard birds sang clear ; 

The sweetest and the saddest day 
It seemed of all the year. 

For, more to me than birds or flowers, 
My playmate left her home, 

And took with her the laughing spring, 
The music and the bloom. 



i66 



3iune. 



JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC. 

O DWELLERS in the stately towns, 

What come ye out to see ? 
This common earth, this common sky, 

This water flowing free ? 

As gayly as these kahnia flowers 
Your door-yard blossoms spring ; 

As sweetly as these wild wood birds 
Your caged minstrels sing. 

You find but common bloom and green, 

The rippling river's rune. 
The beauty which is everywhere 

Beneath the skies of June. 

■ •■••••a 

From ceiled rooms, from silent books, 
From crowded car and town, 

Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap, 
We lay our tired heads down. 

Cool, summer wind, our heated brows ; 

Blue river, through the green 
Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes 

Which all too much have seen. 

For us these pleasant woodland ways 
Are thronged with memories old, 

Have felt the grasp of friendly hands 
And heard love's story told. 
167 



June i. 

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, 

Heavy and slow ; 
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, 

Andthe same brook sings of a year ago. 
There 's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze ; 

And the June sun warm 
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, 

Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. 

Telling the Bees. 
1 

June 2. 

Bard, Sage, and Tribune ! — in himself 

All moods of mind contrasting, — 
The tenderest wail of human woe. 

The scorn-like lightning blasting; 
The pathos which from rival eyes 

Unwilling tears could summon, 
The stinging taunt, the fiery burst 

Of hatred scarcely human ! 

Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower, 

From lips of life-long sadness ; 
Clear picturings of majestic thought 

Upon a ground of madness ; 
And over all Romance and Song 

A classic beauty throwing. 
And laurelled Clio at his side 

Her storied pages showing. 

Randolph of Roanoke. 
168 



June i. 



June 2. 

John Randolph, 1773. 



169 



June 3. 

He entered into the work of reform with the en- 
thusiasm and chivahy of a knight of the crusades, 
lie had faitli in human progress, — in the ultimate 
triumph of the good ; millennial lights beaconed 
up all along his horizon. ..." The most brill- 
iant man I have met in America ! " said George 
Thompson, as we left the hospitable door of our 
friend. Nathaniel P. Rogers. 



. June 4. 

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee 
The mock-bird echoed from his tree. 

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest 
And a nameless longing filled her breast. 

Maud Muller. 

Our sweet illusions only die 
Fulfilling love's sure prophecy ; 
And every wish for better things 
An undreamed beauty nearer brings. 

For fate is servitor of love ; 
Desire and hope and longing prove 
The secret of immortal youth, 
And Nature cheats us into truth. 

Seeking of the Waterfall. 
170 



June 3. 

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, 1794- 



June 4. 



171 



June 5. 

So stood of old the holy Christ 

Amidst the suffering throng ; 
With whom his lightest touch sufficed 

To make the weakest strong. 

The Healer, 

Then I said, my own heart throbbing 
To the time her proud pulse beat, 
" Life hath its regal natures yet, — 
True, tender, brave, and sweet ! " 

The Hero. 
•— 

June 6. 

As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage, 
What worthier knight was found 

To grace in Arthur's golden age 
The fabled Table Round ? 

A voice, the battle's trumpet-note, 

To welcome and restore ; 
A hand, that all unwilling smote. 

To heal and build once more 1 

A soul of fire, a tender heart 

Too warm for hate, he knew 
The generous victor's graceful part 
To sheathe the sword he drew. 

William F. Bartlett. 
172 



June 5. 



June 6. 

William Francis Bartlett, 1840 



173 



June 7. 

O for boyhood's time of June, 

Crowding years in one brief moon, 

"When all things I heard or saw, 

Me, their master, waited for. 

I was rich in flowers and trees, 

Humming-birds and honey-bees. 
, . . • I • • • 

Laughed the brook for my delight 

Through the day and through the night, 

"Whispering at the garden wall. 

Talked with me from fall to fall ; 

Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 

Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 

Mine, on bending orchard trees, 

Apples of Hesperides ! 

The Barefoot Boy. 



June 8. 

When the shadows veil the meadows, 
And the sunset's golden ladders 

Sink from twilight's walls of gray, — 
From the window of my dreaming, 
I can see his sickle gleaming, 
Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming 

Down the locust-shaded way ; 

But away, swift away, 

Fades the fond, delusive seeming. 

And I kneel again to pray. 

The Ranger. 

174 



June 7. 



June 8. 



^75 



June 9. 

Her step grew firmer on the hills 
That watch our homesteads over ; 

On cheek and lip, from summer fields, 
She caught the bloom of clover. 

For health comes sparkling in the streams 

From cool Chocorua stealing : 
There 's iron in our Northern winds ; 

Our pines are trees of healing. 

Among the Hills. 

As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed 

Eternal as the sky ; 
And like the brook's low song, her voice, — 

A sound which could not die. Gone. 



June 10. 

Thou art not here, thou art not there. 

Thy place I cannot see ; 
I only know that where thou art 

The blessed angels be. 

And heaven is glad for thee. 

Look forth once more through space and time, 

And let thy sweet shade fall 
In tenderest grace of soul and form 

On memory's frescoed wall. 

A shadow, and yet all ! A Sea Dream. 

176 



June 9. 



June 10. 



177 



June ii. 

O poet rare and old ! 

Thy words are prophecies ; 
Forward the age of gold, 

The new Saturnian lies. Astr^ea. 

" Glad prophecy ! to this at last," 

The Reader said, " shall all things come. 
Forgotten be the bugle's blast, 

And battle-music of the drum. 
A little while the world may run 
Its old mad way, with needle-gun 
And iron-clad, but truth, at last, shall reign : 
The cradle-song of Christ was never sung in vain ! 

The Tent on the Beach. 



June 12. 

Yes, let them gather ! — Summon forth 
The pledged philanthropy of Earth, 
From every land, whose hills have heard 

The bugle blast of Freedom waking. 
Or shrieking of her symbol-bird 

From out his cloudy eyrie breaking : 
Where Justice hath one worshipper, 
Or truth one altar built to her ; 
Where'er a human eye is weeping 

O'er wrongs which Earth's sad children know. 

The World's Convention. 
178 



June ir. 

Ben Jonson, 1574. 



June 12. 

The World's Convention, 1840; Harriet Martineau, 1802. 



179 



June 13. 

With drooping head and branches crossed 

The twilight forest grieves, 
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost , 

From all its sunlit leaves. 

The Tent on the Beach 

Is not Nature's worship thus, 

Ceaseless ever, going on ? 
Hath it not a voice for us 

In the thunder, or the tone 
Of the leaf-harp faint and small ? 

MOGG Megone. 
— • 

June 14. 

O, sweet as the lapse of water at noon 
O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree, 

The sigh of the wind in the woods of June, 
Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea, 

So sweet, so dear, is the silver}^ tone 

Of her in whose features I sometimes look. 

As I sit at eve by her side alone, 

And we read by turns from the self-same book, — 

Some tale perhaps of the olden time, 

Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme. 

The Demon of the Study. 

Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet Stowe's romance. 

The Tent on the Beach. 
180 ' 



June 13. 

Thomas Arnold, 1795- 



June 14. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1812. 



181 



June 15. 

Round the silver domes of Lucknow, 
Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, 

Breathed the air to Britons dearest, 
The air of Auld Lang Syne. 

The Pipes at Lucknow. 

O Englishmen ! — in hope and creed. 
In blood and tongue our brothers ! 

We too are heirs of Runnymede ; 

And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed 
Are not alone our mother's. 

" Thicker than water," in one rill 
Through centuries of story 
Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still 
We share with you its good and ill. 
The shadow and the glory. 

To Englishmen. 



June 16. 

As 5^onder tower outstretches to the earth 
The dark triangle of its shade alone 
When the clear day is shining on its top. 
So, darkness in the pathway of Man's life 
Is but the shadow of God's providence, 
By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon ; 
And what is dark below is light in Heaven. 

Tauler, 
1S2 



June 15. 

Signing of the Magna Charta at Runnj-medc, 1215. 



June i6. 

Tauler (d.), 1361; William Jay. 1789. 



183 



June 17. 

Preachers like Woolman, or like them who bore 
The faith of Wesley to our Western shore. 

The Panorama. 

Over the roofs of the pioneers 
Gathers the moss of a hundred years ; 
On man and his works has passed the change 
Which needs must be in a century's range. 
The land lies open and warm in the sun, 
Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run, — 
Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain. 
The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain ! 

The Preacher. 
• 

June 18. 

The weapons which your hands have found 
Are those which Heaven itself has wrought, 

Light, Truth, and Love ; — your battle-ground 
The free, broad field of Thought. 

The ReforiMers of England. 

It is done ! 
In the circuit of the sun 
Shall the sound thereof go forth. 
It shall bid the sad rejoice, 
It shall give the dumb a voice, 
It shall belt with joy the earth ! 

Laus Deo. 
184 



June 17. 

Battle of Bunker Hill, 1775 ; John Wesley, 1703. 



June i8. 

George Thompson, 1804. 



185 



June 19. 

The voyageur smiles as he listens 
To the sound that grows apace ; 

Well he knows the vesper ringing 
Of the bells of St. Boniface. 

The bells of the Roman Mission, 
That call from their turrets twain, 

To the boatman on the river, 
To the hunter on the plain ! 

Even so in our mortal journey 

The bitter north-winds blow. 
And thus upon life's Red River 

Our hearts, as oarsmen, row. 

The Red River Voyageur. 



June 20. 

Truth is one ; 
And, in all lands beneath the sun, 
Whoso hath eyes to see may see 
The tokens of its unity. 

• • • • • • • 

The angels to our Aryan sires 

Talked by the earliest household fires ; 

The prophets of the elder day. 

The slant-eyed sages of Cathay, 

Read not the riddle all amiss 

Of higher life evolved from this. 

Miriam 
186 



June 19. 

St Boniface, 1009; Confucius, 551 b. c 



June 20. 



.§7 



June 21. 

I hear again thy low replies, 

I feel thy arm within my own, 
And timidly again uprise 
The fringed lids of hazel eyes. 

With soft brown tresses overblown. 
Ah ! memories of sweet summer eves, 

Of moonlit wave and willowy way, 
Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves, 

And smiles and tones more dear than they ! 

Memories. 

Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies 
Deeply buried from human eyes ; 

And, in the hereafter, angels may 
Roll the stone from its grave away ! 

Maud Muller. 

♦— 

June 22. 

The gray sky wears again its gold 

And purple of adorning, 
And manhood's noonday shadows hold 

The dews of boyhood's morning. 

The dews that washed the dust and soil 
From off the wings of pleasure, 

The sky, that flecked the ground of toil 
With golden threads of leisure. Burns. 

188 



June 21. 



June 22. 



189 



June 23. 

We should not forget that " the kingdom of 
heaven is within " ; that it is the state and affec- 
tions of the soul, the answer of a good conscience, 
the sense of harmony with God, a condition of 
time as well as of eternity. The Better Land. 

The riddle of the world is understood 
Only by him who feels that God is good, 
As only he can feel who makes his love 
The ladder of his faith, and climbs above 
On th' rounds of his best instincts. 

In Quest. 
•— 

June 24. 

He has prospered in health and property, and 
thinks Labrador would be the finest country in the 
world if it only had heavy timber-trees. 

My Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

Now, brothers, for the icebergs 

Of frozen Labrador, 
Floating spectral in the moonshine, 

Along the low, black shore ! 
Where like snow the gannet's feathers 

On Brador's rocks are shed, 
And the noisy murr are flying, 

Like black scuds, overhead. 

The Fishermen. 
190 



June 23. 



June 24. 

Discovery of Labrador by John Cabot, 1497. 



191 



June 25. 

'T was an evening of beauty ; the air was perfume, 
The earth was all greenness, the trees were all 

bloom ; 
And softly the delicate viol was heard, 
Like the murmur of love or the notes of a bird. 

And beautiful maidens moved down in the dance, 
With the magic of motion and sunshine of glance ; 
And white arms wreathed lightly, and tresses fell 

free 
As the plumage of birds in some tropical tree. 

Cities of the Plain. 
♦ 

June 26. 

The green earth sends her incense up 
From many a mountain shrine ; 

From folded leaf and dewy cup 
She pours her sacred wine. 

The mists above the morning rills 
Rise white as wings of pra3'er ; 

The altar curtains of the hills 
Are sunset's purple air. 

The winds with hymns of praise are loud, 

Or low with sobs of pain, — 
The thunder-organ of the cloud, 
The dropping tears of rain. 

The Tent on the Beach. 
192 * 



June 25. 



June 26. 

Philip Doddridge, 1702. 



193 



June 27. 

Thanks for thy gift 
Of ocean flowers, 

Born where the golden drift 

Of the slant sunshine falls 

Down the green, tremulous walls 
Of water, to the cool still coral bowers, 
Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers, 

God's gardens of the deep 

His patient angels keep ; 
Gladdening the dim, strange solitude 

With fairest forms and hues. To A. K. 



June 28. 

Wide open stood the chapel door ; 

A sweet old music, swelling o'er 

Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence, — 

The Litanies of Providence ! 

Then Rousseau spake : " Where two or three 
In His name meet. He there will be ! " 
And then, in silence, on their knees 
They sank beneath the chestnut-trees. 

As to the blind returning light. 
As daybreak to the Arctic night, 
Old faith revived : the doubts of years 
Dissolved in reverential tears. 

The Chapel of the Hermits. 
194 



June 27. 



June 28. 

Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712. 



195 



June 29. 

Leaving on our right hand Plum Island (so called 
on account of the rare plums which do grow upon 
it), we struck into the open sea, and soon came in 
sight of the Islands of Shoals. There be seven of 
them in all, lying off the town of Hampton on the 
main-land, about a league. 

Margaret Smith's Journal. 

The Island still is purple with plums, 
Up the river the salmon comes, 
The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds 
On hillside berries and marish seeds. 

Prophecy oi' Samuel' Sewali-. 

♦ 

June 30. 

From the radiant ranks of martyrs 
Notes of joy and praise he hears, 

Songs of his poor land's deliverance 
Sounding from the future years. 

Lo, he wakes ! but airs celestial 

Bathe him in immortal rest, 
And he sees with unsealed vision 

Scotland's cause with victory blest. 

Shining hosts attend and guard him 

As he leaves his prison door ; 
And to death as to a triumph 

Walks the great MacCallum More ! 

The Dream of Argvlb. 
196 



June 29. 

Celia Thaxter, 1835. 



June 30. 

Archibald Campbell, ninth Earl of Argyle, (d.) 1685. 



197 



THE RIVER PATH. 

No bird-song floated down the hill, 
The tangled bank below was still ; 

No rustle from the birchen stem, 
No ripple from the water's hem. 

The dusk of twilight round us grew, 
We felt the falling of the dew ; 

For, from us, ere the day was done, 
The wooded hills shut out the sun. 

But on the river's farther side 
We saw the hill-tops glorified, — 

A tender glow, exceeding fair, 
A dream of day without its glare. 

" So," prayed we, " when our feet draw near 
The river dark, with mortal fear, 

" And the night cometh chill with dew, 
O Father ! let thy light break through ; 

*' So let the hills of doubt divide, 
So bridge with faith the sunless tide ; 

" So let the eyes that fail on earth 
On thy eternal hills look forth ! " 
19S 



Siirtp. 



SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE. 

White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep, 
Light mists, whose soft embraces keep 
The sunshine on the hills asleep ! 

O isles of calm ! — O dark, still wood ! 
And stiller skies that overbrood 
Your rest with deeper quietude ! 

shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through 
Yon mountain gaps, my longing view 
Beyond the purple and the blue, 

To stiller sea and greener land, 

And softer lights and airs more bland. 

And skies, — the hollow of God's hand ! 

Transfused through you, O mountain friends ! 
With mine your solemn spirit blends, 
And life no more hath separate ends. 

1 read each misty mountain sign, 

I know the voice of wave and pine, 
And I am yours, and ye are mine. 

Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, 
I lapse into the glad release 
Of Nature's own exceeding peace. 

199 



July i. 

In sweet accordancy of praise and love, 

The singing waters run ; 
And sunset mountains wear in light above 

The smile of duty done. 

Christian Tourists. 

And so beside the Silent Sea 

I wait the mufifled oar ; 
No harm from Him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore. Eternal Goodness. 



July 2. 

As a people, we do not feel and live out our 
great Declaration. We lack faith in man, — con- 
fidence in simple humanity, apart from its environ- 
ments. The Lighting up. 

Then Freedom sternly said : " I shun 
No strife nor pang beneath the sun, 
When human rights are staked and won. 

" I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock, 
I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock, 
1 walked with Sidney to the block. 

" The moor of Marston felt my tread. 

Through Jersey snows the march I led, 

My voice Magenta's charges sped." 

The Watchers. 
200 



July i. 

John Farrar, 1779. 



July 2. 

Resolutions of Independence, 1776; Marston Moor, 1644. 



20 [ 



July 3. 

And still, in the summer twilights, 

When the river seems to run 
Out from the inner glory, 

Warm with the melted sun, 

The weary mill -girl lingers 

Beside the charmed stream, 
And the sky and the golden water 

Shape and color her dream. 

Cobbler Keezar's Vision. 



July 4. 

Life greatens in these later years, 
The century's aloe flowers to-day ! 

Snow-bound. 

Our fathers' God ! from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand. 
We meet to-day, united, free, 
And loyal to onr land and Thee, 
To thank Thee for the era done. 
And trust Thee for the opening one. 

Centennial Hymn. 

The dark night is ending and dawn has begun : 
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun. 

All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one ! 

A Christmas Carmen. 
202 



July 3. 

John Singleton Copley, 1738 



July 4. 

Declaration of Independence, 1776; N. Hawthorne, 1804. 



203 



July 5. 

The moated wall and battle-ship may fail, 

But safe shall justice prove ; 

Stronger than greaves of brass or iron mail 

The panoply of love. 

Freedom in Brazil. 

Then the dreary shadows scattered, like a cloud in 

morning's breeze, 
And a low deep voice within me seemed whispering 

words like these : 
" Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy heaven 

a brazen wall, 
Trust still PI is loving-kindness whose power is over 

all." Cassandra Southwick. 



July 6. 

Is there, then, no death for a word once spoken ? 

Was never a deed but left its token 

Written on tables never broken ? 

Do the elements subtle reflections give ? 

Do pictures of all the ages live 

On Nature's infinite negative ? The Palatine. 

Why need we care to ask ? — who dreams 

Without their thorns of roses, 
Or. wonders that the truest steel 

The readiest spark discloses ? 

Among the Hills. 

204 



July 5. 

David G. Farragutj iSot. 



July 6. 

John Flaxman, 1755. 



205 



July 7. 

Over the woods and meadow-lands 

A crimson-tinted shadow lay 

Of clouds through which the setting day 

Flung a slant glory far away. 
It glittered on the wet sea-sands, 

It flamed upon the city's panes, 
Smote the white sails of ships that wore 
Outward or in, and glided o'er 

The steeples with their veering vanes ! 

The Preacher. 

— „ ■> — 

July 8. 

We keep thy pleasant memory freshly green, 
Of love's inheritance a priceless part, 

Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is seen 
To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art, 

With pencil dipped alone in colors of the heart. 

In Peace. 

If, in the thronged and noisy mart, 

The Muses found their son. 
Could any say his tuneful art 

A duty left undone .-' 

New hands the wires of song may sweep, 

New voices challenge fame ; 
But let no moss of years o'ercreep 

The lines of Halleck's name. 

Fit^Greene Halleck. 

206 



July 7. 



July 8. 

Maria Lowell, 182 1 ; Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1790. 



207 



July 9. 

If it is not permitted us to believe all things, we 
can at least hope them. Despair is infidelity and 
death. Temporally and spiritually, the declaration 
of inspiration holds good, — " IVe aj-e saved by 
hope.^^ Utopian Schemes. 

Rejoice in hope ! The day and night 
Are one with God, and one with them 
Who see by faith the cloudy hem 

Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light ! 

AsTRyEA AT THE CaPITOL. 
• 



July 10. 

That night with painful care I read 
What Hippo's saint and Calvin said, — 
The living seeking to the dead ! 

And still I pra^^ed, " Lord, let me see 
How Three are One, and One is Three ; 
Read the dark riddle unto me ! " 

Revealed in love and sacrifice, 

The Holiest passed before thine eyes. 

One and the same, in threefold guise. 

The equal Father in rain and sun, 
His Christ in the good to evil done, 
His Voice in thy soul ; — and the Three are One ! 

Trinitas. 

208 



July 9. 



July 10. 

John Calvin, 1509. 



209 



July ii. 

O for the tongue of him who lies at rest 

In Quincy's shade of patrimonial trees, — 
Last of the Puritan tribunes and the best. 

To Kossuth. 

He rests with the immortals ; his journey has been 

long : 
For him no wail of sorrow, but a paean full and 

strong ! 
So well and bravely has he done the work he found 

to do, 
To justice, freedom, duty, God, and man forever 

true. John Quincy Adams. 
♦— 

July 12. 

Strong to the end, a man of men, from out the 

strife he passed ; 
The grandest hour of all his life was that of earth 

the last. 

'T is a strange and weird procession that is slowly 

moving on. 
The phantom patriots gathered to the funeral of 

their son ! 
In shadowy guise they move along, brave Otis with 

hushed tread, 

And Warren walking reverently by the father of 

the dead. John Quincv Adams. 

210 



July n. 

John Quincy Adams, 1767. 



July 12. 



211 



July 13. 

She sat beneath the broad-armed elms 
That skirt the mowing-meadow, 

And watched the gentle west-wind weave 
The grass with shine and shadow. 

Beside her, from the summer heat 
To share her grateful screening, 

With forehead bared, the farmer stood, 
Upon his pitchfork leaning. 

Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face 
Had nothing mean or common, — 

Strong, manly, true, the tenderness 
And pride beloved of woman. 

Among the Hills. 



July 14. 

How gladly would we forego the golden streets 
and gates of pearl, the thrones, temples, and harps, 
for the sunset lights of our native valleys ; the 
woodpaths, whose moss carpets are woven with 
violets and wild flowers ; the songs of birds, the 
low of cattle, the hum of bees in the apple-blos- 
soms. My Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

No dreary splendors wait our coming 

"Where rapt ghost sits from ghost apart ; 
Homeward we go to Heaven's thanksgiving, 
The harvest-gathering of the heart. 

To Lydia Maria Child. 
212 



July 13. 



July 14. 



213 



July 15. 

I am : how little more I know ! 
Whence came I ? Whither do I go ? 
A centred self, which feels and is ; 
A cry between the silences ; , 
A shadow-birth of clouds at strife 
With sunshine on the hills of life ; 
A shaft from Nature's quiver cast 
Into the Future from the Past ; 
Between the cradle and the shroud, 
A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud. 

Questions of Life. 

But this mysterious universe, through which, half 
veiled in its own shadow, our dim little planet is 
wheeling, with its star worlds and thought-weary- 
ing spaces, remains. Agency of Evil. 



July 16. 

Who wants eternal sunshine or shadow ? Who 
would fix forever the loveliest cloudwork of an 
autumn sunset, or hang over him an everlasting 
moonlight .'' The Beautiful. 

And light is mingled with the gloom, 

And joy with grief ; 
Divinest compensations come, 
Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom 

In sweet relief. Anniversary Poem 

214 



July 15. 

Galileo, 1564. 



July i6. 



215 



July 17. 

Have you not felt at times that our ordinary con- 
ceptions of heaven itself, derived trom the vague 
hints and Oriental imagery of the Scriptures, are 
sadly inadequate to our human wants and hopes ? 
My Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

Not for me the crowns of gold, 
Palms, and harpings manifold ; 
Not for erring eye and feet 
Jasper wall and golden street. 
What thou wilt, Father, give ! 
All is gain that I receive. 

Andrew Rykman's Prayer. 



July 18. 

Yet, if the spirit gazing through 

The vista of the past can view 

One deed to Heaven and virtue true, — 

If through the wreck of wasted powers. 

Of garlands wreathed from Folly's bowers, 

Of idle aims and misspent hours, — 

The e3^e can note one sacred spot 

By Pride and Self profaned not, — 

A green place in the waste of thought, — 

Better than Glory's pom]3 will be 

That green and blessed spot to me, 

A palm-shade in Eternity ! 

Lines in the Book of a Friend. 
216 



July 17. 

Isaac Watts, 1674. 



July i8. 



217 



July 19. 

Not she who lightly laughed is there, 
"With scornful toss of midnight hair, 

Her dark, disdainful eyes, 

And proud lip worldly-wise. 

With more than all her old-time pride 
She walks the rye-field at his side, 

Careless of cot or hall, 

Since love transfigures all. 

Rich beyond dreams, the vantage-ground 
Of life is gained ; her hands have found 

The talisman of old 

That changes all to gold. 

The Tent on the Beach. 



-♦- 



July 20. 

She who could for love dispense 
With all its glittering accidents. 
And trust her heart alone. 
Finds love and gold her own. 

The Tent on the Beach 

O, rank is good, and gold is fair. 

And high and low mate ill ; 

But love has never known a law 

Beyond its own sweet will ! 

Amy Wentworth- 
218 



July 19. 



July 20. 



!I9 



July 21. 

Hard by a farmer hale and young 
His cradle in the rye-field swung, 

Tracking the yellow plain 

With windrows of ripe grain. 

And still, whene'er he paused to whet 
His scythe, the sidelong glance he met 

Of large dark eyes, where strove 

False pride and secret love. 

Be strong, young mower of the grain ; 
That love shall overmatch disdain, 

Its instincts soon or late 

The heart shall vindicate. 

The Tent on the Beach. 



July 22. 

In trance and dream of old, God's prophet saw 
The casting down of thrones. Thou, watching 

lone 
The hot Sardinian coast-line, hazy hilled, 
Where, fringing round Caprera's rocky zone 

With foam, the slow waves gather and withdraw, 
Behold'st the vision of the seer fulfilled. 
And hear'st the sea-winds burdened with a sound 
Of falling chains, as, one by one, unbound, 

The nations lift their right hands up and swear 
Their oath of freedom. Garibaldi. 

220 



July 21. 



July 22. 

Garibaldi, 1807. 



221 



July 23. 

Rough, bleak, and hard, our little State 
Is scant of soil, of limits strait ; 
Her yellow sands are sands alone, 
Her only mines are ice and stone ! 

Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands, 
And wintry hills, the school-house stands, 
And what her rugged soil denies, 
The harvest of the mind supplies. 

Our State. 

Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act. 

And make her generous thought a fact, 

Keeping with many a light disguise 

The secret of self-sacrifice. Snow-bound. 



July 24. 

No greener valleys the sun invite, 
On smoother beaches no sea-birds light, 
No blue waves shatter to foam more white ! 

The Palatine. 

" Never tell us that you '11 fail us. 
Where the purple beach-plum mellows 

On the bluffs so wild and grav. 
Hasten, for the oars are falling ; 
Hark, our merry mates are calling : 
Time it is that we were all in, 

Singing tideward down the bay ! " 

The Ranger. 
222 



July 23. 



Charlotte Cushman, iSi6. 



July 24. 



223- 



July 25. 

And still to childhood's sweet appeal 

The heart of genius turns, 
And more than all the sages teach 

From lisping voices learns, — 

The voices loved of him who sang, 
Where Tweed and Teviot glide, 
That sound to-day on all the winds 
That blow from Rydal-side. 

Child-Songs. 
• 

July 26. 

I am groping for the keys 
Of the heavenly harmonies ; 
Still within my heart I bear 
Love for all things good and fair. 

Andrew Rykman's Prayeb, 

I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 

I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care. 

O brothers ! if my faith is vain, 

If hopes like these betray. 
Pray for me that my feet may gain 
The sure and safer way. 

The Eternal Goodness. 
224 



July 25. 



July 26. 



225 



July 27. 

If the stream had no quiet eddying place, could 
we so admire its cascade over the rocks ? Were 
there no clouds, could we so hail the sky shining 
through them in its still calm purity ? 

The Beautiful. 

The Night is mother of the Day, 

The Winter of the Spring, 
And ever upon old Decay 

The greenest mosses cling. 
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks. 

Through showers the sunbeams fall ; 
For God, who loveth all his works, 

Has left his Hope with all ! 

A Dream of Summer. 



July 28. 

In blouse of gray, with fishing-rod, 
Half screened by leaves, a stranger trod 

The margin of the pond, 

Watching the group beyond. 

The supreme hours unnoted come ; 

Unfelt the turning tides of doom ; 
And so the maids laughed on, 
Nor dreamed what Fate had done, — 

Nor knew the step was Destiny's 
That rustled in the birchen trees. 

The Tent on the Beach. 

226 



July 27. 

Thomas Campbell, 1777. 



July 28. 



227 



July 29. 

More than clouds of purple trail 

In the gold of setting day ; 
More than gleams of wing or sail 

Beckon from the sea-mist gray. 

Glimpses of immortal youth, 

Gleams and glories seen and flown, 

Far-heard voices sweet with truth, 
Airs from viewless Eden blown, — 

Beauty that eludes our grasp, 

Sweetness that transcends our taste, 

Loving hands we may not clasp, 
Shining feet that mock our haste. 

The Vanishers. 



July 30. 

Our sweet Chaucer telleth of a mirror in the 
which he that looked did see all his past life ; that 
magical mirror is no fable, for in the memory of 
love old things do return and show themselves as 
features do in the glass, with a perfect and most 
beguiling likeness. Margaret Smith's Journal. 

The eyes of memory will not sleep, 

Its ears are open still. 
And vigils with the past they keep 
Against or with my will. 

The Knight of St John. 
228 



July 29. 

Hiram Powers, 1805 ; Henri Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805. 



July 30. 

Samuel Rogers, 1763. 



229 



July 31. 

The blessing of her quiet life 

Fell on us like the dew ; 
And good thoughts, where her footsteps pressed 

Like fairy blossoms grew. 

Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds 

Were in her very look ; 
We read her face, as one who reads 

A true and holy book. Gone. 

Her path shall brighten more and more 

Unto the perfect day ; 
She cannot fail of peace who bore 

Such peace with her away. 

O sweet, calm face that seemed to wear 

The look of sins forgiven ! 
O voice of prayer that seemed to bear 

Our own needs up to heaven ! 

The Friend's Burial. 

And hence this scene, in sunset glory warm, — 

Its woods around. 
Its still stream winding on in light and shade, 
Its soft^ green meadows and its upland glade, — 

To me is holy ground. Chalkley Hall. 



230 



July 31. 

Sarah Alden Ripley, 1793. 



231 



THE SUMMONS. 

My ear is full of summer sounds, 
Of summer sights my languid eye ; 

Beyond the dusty village bounds 

I loiter in my daily rounds, 

And in the noon-time shadows lie. 

I hear the wild bee wind his horn, 

The bird swings on the ripened wheat, 
The long green lances of the corn 
Are tilting in the winds of morn, 
The locust shrills his song of heat. 



2.^2 



I 'I ft3f '* 




3liugii0t» 



PRELUDE. 

Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold 
That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought, 
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod. 
And the red pennons of the cardinal -flowers 
Hang motionless upon their upright staves. 
The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind, 
Wing-weary with its long flight from the south, 
Unfelt ; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf 
With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams, 
Confesses it. The locust by the wall 
Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. 
A single hay-cart down the dusty road 
Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep 
On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill, 
Huddled along the stone wall's shady side. 
The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still 
Defied the dog-star. Through the open door 
A drowsy smell of flowers — gray heliotrope, 
And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette — 
Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends 
To the pervading symphony of peace. 



233 



August i. 

Far round the bleak and stormy Cape 

The vent'rous Macey passed, 
And on Nantucket's naked isle 

Drew up his boat at last. 

And yet that isle remaineth 

A refuge of the free, 
As when true-hearted Macey 

Beheld it from the sea. 

Free as the winds that winnow 
Her shrubless hills of sand, -r- 

Free as the waves that batter 

Along her yielding land. The Exiles. 



August 2. 

Not his the golden pen's or lip's persuasion, 

But a fine sense of right. 
And Truth's directness, meeting each occasion 

Straight as a line of light. 

Touched with a grief that needs no outward drap- 
ing, 
All swelled the long lament, 
Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, shaping 

His viewless monument ! Joseph Sturgb. 
234 



August i. 

Maria Mitchell, i8iS; George Tickn or, 1791. 



August 2. 

Joseph Sturge, 1793 ; Joseph John Gumey, 1788. 



235 



August 3. 

No sweeter bowers the bee delayed, 
In wild Hymettus' scented shade, 
Than those you dwell among ; 

• ••••••• 

A charmed life unknown to death, 
Immortal freshness Nature hath ; 

Her fabled fount and glen 
Are now and here : Dodona's shrine 
Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine, 

All is that e'er hath been. To — 



August 4. 

The glorious ideal of Shelley, who, atheist as he 
was through early prejudice and defective educa- 
tion, saw the horizon of the world's future kindling 
with the light of a better day, — that hope and that 
faith which constitute, as it were, the world's life, 
and without which it would be dark and dead, can- 
not be in vain. The World's End. 

Somewhat of goodness, something true 
From sun and spirit shining through 
All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark 
Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark. 
Attests the presence everywhere 
Of love and providential care. Miriam. 

236 



August 3. 



August 4. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792. 



237 



August 5. 

O lonely bay of Trinity, 
O dreary shores, give ear ! 

From world to world his couriers fly, 

Thought-winged and shod with fire ; 
The angel of His stormy sky 

Rides down the sunken wire. * 

What saith the herald of the Lord ? 

" The world's long strife is done ; 
Close wedded by that mystic cord. 

Its continents are one." 

The Tent on the Beach. 
• 

August 6. 

White-robed walked Fran9ois Fenelon, 
Stainless as Uriel in the sun ! 

The Chapel of the Hermits. 

And Wales, from Snowden's mountain wall, 
Shall startle at that thrilling call. 

As if she heard her bards again ; 
And Erin's " harp on Tara's wall " 

Give out its ancient strain, 
Mirthful and sweet, yet sad withal, — 

The melody which Erin loves, 
When o'er that harp, 'mid bursts of gladness 
And slogan cries and lyke-wake sadness. 

The hand of her O'Connell moves ! 

The World's Convention. 
238 



August 5. 

First Telegraphic Message across the Atlantic, 1858. 



August 6. 

Frangois de F^nelon, 1651 ; Daniel O'Connell, 1775. 



239 



August 7. 

There, gloomily against the sky 

The Dark Isles rear their summits high ; 

And Desert Rock, abrupt and bare, 

Lifts- its gray turrets in the air, — 

Seen from afar, like some stronghold 

Built by the ocean kings of old ; 

And, faint as smoke-wreath white and thin. 

Swells in the north vast Katahdin : 

And, wandering from its marshy feet, 

The broad Penobscot comes to meet 

And mingle with his own bright bay. 
Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods, 
Arched over by the ancient woods, 
Which Time, in those dim solitudes, 

Wielding the dull axe of Decay, 

Alone hath ever shorn away. 

MOGG Megonb. 



August 8. 

Child of the forest ! — strong and free. 

Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair, 
She swam the lake or climbed the tree, 

Or struck the flying bird in air. 
O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon 

Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way ; 
And dazzling in the summer noon 
The blade of her light oar threw off its shower of 
spray ! The Bridal of Pennacook. 

240 



August 7. 

Arrival of D'Iberville at Penobscot, 1696. 



August 8. 



24X 



August 9. 

White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway 
winds 
Before me ; dust is on the shrunken grass, 
And on the trees beneath whose boughs I pass ; 
Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky. 
Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye, 

While mounting with his dog-star high and 
higher 
Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds 

The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire. 

Pictures. 



August 10. 

What heed I of the dusty land 

And noisy town ? 
I see the mighty deep expand 
From its white line of glimmering sand 
To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts 

down ! 

In listless quietude of mipd, 

I yield to all 
The change of cloud and wave and wind 
And passive on the flood reclined, 
I wander with the waves, and with them rise and 
fall. Hampton Beach. 



242 



August 9. 



August 10, 



243 



August ii. 

Earth's rocky tablets bear forever 

The dint of rain and small bird's track : 

The bird that trod the mellow lavers 
Of the young earth is sought in vain ; 

The cloud is gone that wove the sandstone, 
From God's design, with threads of rain ! 

The First Flowers. 

Shall these poor elements outlive 

The mind whose kingly will they wrought ? 
Their gross unconsciousness survive 

Thy godlike energy of thought ? Follen. 



August 12. 

Far behind was Ocean striving 
With his chains of sand. 

The Fountain. 

And there, on breezy morns, they saw 
The fishing-schooners outward run, 
Their low-bent sails in'tack and flaw 

Turned white or dark to shade and sun. 
Sometimes, in calms of closing day, 
They watched the spectral mirage play, 
Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh, 
And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea 
the sky. The Tent on the Beach. 

244 



August ii. 

Jeffries Wyman, 1814. 



August 12. 



24s 



August 13. 

Through him we hoped to speak the word 
Which wins the freedom of a land ; 

And lift, for human right, the sword 

Which drojDped from Hampden's dying hand. 

No wild enthusiast of the right, 

Self-poised and clear, he showed alway 

The coolness of his northern night. 

The ripe repose of autumn's day. Rantoul. 

Ah ! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind 

blows cool, 
And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy 

grave, Rantoul ! Garrison of Cai>e Ann. 



August 14. 

And when along the line of shore 

The mists crept upward chill and damp, 
Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor 

Beneath the flaring lantern lamp, 
They talked of all things old and new, 
Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do ; 
And in the unquestioned freedom of the tent. 
Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ease unbent. 

The Tent on the Beach. 



246 



August 13. 

Robert Rantoul, 1805. 



August 14. 



247 



August 15. 

Not by the page word-painted 
Let life be banned or sainted : 
Deeper than written scroll 
The colors of the soul. 

Sweeter than any sung 

My songs that found no tongue ; 

Nobler than any fact 

My wish that failed of act. 

My Triumph. 
• 

August 16. 

Like warp and woof all destinies 

Are woven fast, 
Linked in sympathy like the keys 

Of an organ vast. 

Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar ; 

Break but one 
Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar 

Through all will run. 

My Soul and I. 

Through wish, resolve, and act, our will 
Is moved by undreamed forces still ; 
And no man measures in advance 
His strength with untried circumstance. 

Over-ruled. 
248 



August 15. 

Walter Scott, 1771 ; Eliza Lee Follen, 1787. 



August i6. 



249 



August 17. 

Seeress of the misty Norland, 
Daughter of the Vikings bold, 

Welcome to the sunny Vineland, 
Which thy fathers sought of old ! 

Soft as flow of Silja's waters, 

When the moon of summer shines, 

Strong as Winter from his mountains 
Roaring through the sleeted i^ines. 

Heart and ear, we long have listened 

To thy saga, rune, and song. 
As a household joy and presence 

We have known and loved thee long. 

Frederika Bremer. 



August 18. 

Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black, 

Stooped low upon the darkening main, 
Piercing the waves along its track 
With the slant javelins of rain. 
And when west-wind and sunshine warm 
Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm, 
They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showers 
Where the green buds of waves burst into white 
froth flowers. 

The Tent on the Beach. 
250 



August 17. 

Frederika Bremer, 1801. 



August i8. 



251 



August 19. 

Looking at the purity, wisdom, and sweetness of 
his life, who shall say that his faith in the teaching 
of the Holy Spirit — the interior guide and light — 
was a mistaken one ? 

Introduction to Woolman's Journal. 

All which glows in Pascal's pages, — 

All which sainted Guion sought. 
Or the blue-eyed German Rahel 

Half-unconscious taught : — 
Beauty, such as Goethe pictured. 

Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed 
Living warmth and starry brightness 

Round that poor man's head. 



To 



With a copy of Woolmaii's Joiirtial. 
♦ 

August 20. 

So sometimes comes to soul and sense 
The feeling which is evidence 
That very near about us lies 
The realm of spiritual mysteries. 
The sphere of the supernal powers 
Impinges on this world of ours. 

With smile of trust and folded hands, 

The passive soul in waiting stands 

To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, 

The One true Life its own renew. 

The Meeting. 
252 



August 19. 

John Woolnian, 1720. 



August 20. 



253 



August 21. 

Older and slower, yet the same, files in the long 

array, 
And hearts are light and eyes are glad, though 

heads are badger-gray. 

And haply with them, all unseen, old comrades, 

gone before, 
Pass, silently as shadows pass, within your open 

door, — 
The eagle face of Lindley Coates, brave Garrett's 

daring zeal. 
The Christian grace of Pennock, the steadfast heart 

of Neal. 

The Golden Wedding of Longwood. 
• 

August 22. 

A gb'mmer of heat was in the air ; 

The dark green woods were still ; 
And the skirts of a heavy thunder-cloud 

Hung over the western hill. 
Black, thick, and vast arose that cloud 

Above the wilderness, 
As some dark world from upper air 

Were stooping over this. 
At times the solemn thunder pealed, 

And all was still again, 
Save a low murmur in the air 

Of coming wind and rain. The Exiles. 
254 



August 21. 

Thomas Garrett, 1783. 



August 22. 



25s 



August 23. 

Who knows but that my idle verses 
May leave some trace by IMerrimacIc ! 

So, when this fluid age we live in 

Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme, 

Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle 
The savans of the coming time : 

And, following out their dim suggestions, 
Some idly-curious hand may draw 

My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier 
Drew fish and bird from fin and claw. 

The First Flowers 



August 24. 

The truths ye urge are borne abroad 
By every wind and every tide ; 

The voice of Nature and of God • 
Speaks out upon your side. 

Reformers of England. 

Call him not heretic whose works attest 
His faith in goodness by no creed confessed. 
Whatever in love's name is truly done 
To free the bound and lift the fallen one, 
Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word 
Is not against Him, labors for our Lord. 

By their Works. 
256 



August 23. 

Cuvier, 1769. 



August 24. 

William Wilberforce, 1759; Theodore Parker, 1810. 



257 



August 25. 

From gray sea-fog, from icy drift, 

From peril and from pain, 
The liome-bound fisher greets thy lights, 

O hundred-harbored Maine ! 

The Dead Ship of Harpswell. 

Keep who will the city's alleys, 
Take the smooth-shorn plain, — 

Give to us the cedar valleys, 
Rocks and hills of Maine ! 

In our North-land, wild and woody, 
Let us still have part : 

Rugged nurse and mother sturdy, 

Hold us to thy heart ! 

The Lumbermen. 
♦— 

August 26. 

In sky and wave the white clouds swam. 
And the blue hills of Nottingham 

Through gaps of leafy green 

Across the lake were seen, — 

When, in the shadow of the ash 
That dreams its dream in Attitash, 

In the warm summer weather, 

Two maidens sat together. 

They sat and watched in idle mood 
The gleam and shade of lake and wood. 

The Maids of Attitash. 
258 



August 25. 

John Neal, 1793. 



August 26. 



259 



August 27. 

Now in the west, the heavy clouds 

Scattered and fell asunder, 
While feebler came the rush of rain, 

And fainter growled the thunder. 

O, beautiful ! that rainbow span, 

O'er dim Crane-neck was bended ; — 

One bright foot touched the eastern hills, 
And one with ocean blended. 

The glory of the sunset heaven 

On land and water lay, — 
On the steep hills of Agawam, 

On cape, and bluff, and bay. 

The Exiles. 
• 

August 28. 

God bless New Hampshire ! — from her granite 

peaks 
Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks. 

New Hampshire. 

By many a Northern lake and hill, 
From many a mountain pasture, 

Shall Fancy play the Drover still, 
And speed the long night faster. 

Then let us on, through shower and sun, 
And heat and cold, be driving ; 

There 's life alone in duty done. 

And rest alone in striving. 

The Drovers. 
260 



August 27. 



August 28. 

John Stark, 1728 ; Jones Very, 1813. 



261" 



August 29. 

His laurels fresh from song and lay, 
Romance, art, science, rich in all, 

And young of heart, how dare we say 
We keep his seventieth festival ? 

His sparkling surface scarce betrays 

The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled, — 

The wisdom of the latter days. 
And tender memories of the old. 

• •*••••• 

Long may he live to sing for us 
His sweetest songs at evening time, 

And, like his Chambered Nautilus, 
To holier heights of beauty climb ! 

Our Autocrat. 



August 30. 

He ceased : just then the ocean seemed 

To lift a half-faced moon in sight ; 
And, shore-ward, o'er the waters gleamed, 

From crest to crest, a line of light, 
Such as of old, with solemn awe. 
The fishers by Gennesaret saw, 
When dry-shod o'er it walked the Son of God, 
Tracking the waves with light where'er his sandals 
trod. The Tent on the Beach. 

262 



August 29. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1S09. 



August 30. 



^63 



August 31. 

The broad and pleasant " river of the Water of 
Life " glided peacefully before him, fringed " on 
either side with green trees, with all manner of 
fruit," and leaves of healing, with " meadows beau- 
tified with lilies, and green all the year long " ; he 
saw the Delectable Mountains, glorious with sun- 
shine, overhung with gardens and orchards and 
vineyards ; and beyond all, the Land of Beulah, 
with its eternal sunshine, its song of birds, its 
music of fountains, its purple clustered vines, and 
groves through which w^alked the Shining Ones, 
silver-winged and beautiful. 

What were bars and bolts and prison-walls to 
him, whose eyes were anointed to see, and whose 
ears opened to hear, the glory and the rejoicing of 
the City of God, when the pilgrims were conducted 
to its golden gates, from the black and bitter river, 
with the sounding trumpeters, the transfigured 
harpers with their crowns of gold, the sweet voices 
of angels, the welcoming peal of bells in the holy 
city, and the songs of the redeemed ones ? 

John Bunyan. 



264 



August 31. 

John Bunyan, (d.) 1688; Auguste de Stael-Holstein, 1790. 



265 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 

When heats as of a tropic clime 

Burned all our inland valleys through, 
Three friends, the guests of summer time, 

Pitched their white tent where seawinds blew. 
Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed 
With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed, 
Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms 
Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland 
farms. 

They rested there, escaped awhile 

From cares that wear the life away, 
To eat the lotus of the Nile 

And drink the poppies of Cathay, — 
To fling their loads of custom down, 
Like drift-weed, on the sand slopes brown. 
And in the sea waves drown the restless pack 
Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their 
track. 



265 



September* 



SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP. 

Touched by a light that hath no name, 

A glory never sung, 
Aloft on sky and mountam wall 

Are God's great pictures hung. 
How changed the summits vast and old ! 

No longer granite-browed. 
They melt in rosy mist ; the rock 

Is softer than the cloud ; 
The valley holds it's breath ; no leaf 

Of all its elms is twirled : 
The silence of eternity 

Seems falling on the world. 

Farewell ! these smiling hills must wear 

Too soon their wintrv frown. 
And snow cold winds from off them shake 

The maple's red leaves down. 
But I shall see a summer sun 

Still setting broad and low ; 
The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom, 

The golden water flow. 
A lover's claim is mine on all 

I see to have and hold, — 
The rose-light of perpetual hills, 

And sunsets never cold ! 
267 



September i. 

September sunsets, changing forests, moonrise 
and cloud, sun and rain, — I for one am contented 
with them. They fill my heart with a sense of 
beauty. The World's End. 

O, at that hour the very earth seemed changed be- 
neath my eye, 

A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of 
the sky, 

A lovelier light on rock and hill and stream and 
woodland lay, 

And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of 

the bay. Cassandra Southwick. 
♦ 

September 2. 

Visionary ! Were not the good St. Pierre, and 
Fenelon, and Howard, and Clarkson visionaries 
also .'' Fame and Glory. 

A rustling as of wings in flight, 

An upward gleam of lessening white, 

So passed the vision, sound and sight. 

But round me, like a silver bell 
Rung down the listening sky to tell 
Of holy help, a .sweet voice fell. 

*' Still hope and trust," it sang ; " the rod 

Must fall, the wine-press must be trod. 

But all is possible with God ! " 

The Watchers. 
268 



September i. 

Lydia H. Sigourney, 1791. 



September 2. 

John Howard, 1726. 



269 



September 3. 

Lo ! once again our feet we set 

On still green wood-paths, twilight wet, 

By lonely brooks, whose waters fret 

The roots of spectral beeches ; 

Again the hearth-fire glimmers o'er 

Home's whitewashed wall and painted floor, 

And young eyes widening to the lore 

Of faery-folks and witches. 

To MY Sister. 

The wonderland of childhood must henceforth 
be sought within the domains of truth. The strange 
facts of natural history, and the sweet mysteries of 
flowers and forests, and hills and waters, will prof- 
itably take the place of the fairy lore of the past, 
and poetry and romance still hold their accustomed 
seats in the circle of home. 

Charms and Fairy Faith. 
♦ 

September 4. 

Thou livest, Follen ! — not in vain 
Hath thy fine spirit meekly borne 

The burthen of Life's cross of pain, 

And the thorned crown of suffering worn. 

Less dreary seems the untried way 

Since thou hast left thy footprints there, 

And beams of mournful beauty play 

Round the sad Angel's sable hair. Follen. 
270 



September 3. 



September 4. 

Charles Follen, 1796 ; PhcEbe Cary, 1824. 



27I' 



September 5. 

I draw a freer breath — I seem 

Like all I see — 
Waves in the sun — the white-winged gleam 
Of sea-birds in the slanting beam — 
And far-off sails which flit before the south-wind 
free. Hampton Beach. 

To the beach we all are going, 
And, to save the task of rowing, 
West by north the wind is blowing, 

Blowing briskly down the bay ! 

Come away, come away ! 
Time and tide are swiftly flowing. 

Let us take them while we may ! 

The Ranger. 

♦ 

September 6. 

The great impulse of the French Revolution was 
not confined by geographical boundaries. Flashing 
hope into the dark places of the earth, far down 
among the poor and long oppressed, or startling 
the oppressor in his guarded chambers like that 
mountain of fire which fell into the sea at the sound 
of the apocalyptic trumpet, it agitated the world. 

The Scottish Reformers. 

Take heart from John de Matha ! — 
God's errands never fail ! 

The Mantle of St. John de Matha. 
272 



September 5. 



September 6. 

Lafayette, 1757. 



^n 



September 7. 

Himself to Nature's heart so near 

That all her voices in his ear 

Of beast or bird had meanings clear, 

Like Apollonius of old, 

Who knew the tales the sparrows told, 

Or Hermes who interpreted 

What the sage cranes of Nilus said. 

Snow-Bound. 



September 8. 

The river wound as it should wind ; 

Their place the mountains took ; 
The white torn fringes of their clouds 

Wore no unwonted look. 

Yet ne'er before that river's rim 

Was pressed by feet of mine, 
Never before mine eyes had crossed 

That broken mountain line. 

A presence, strange at once and known, 
Walked with me as my guide ; 

The skirts of some forgotten life 
Trailed noiseless at my side. 

Was it a dim-remembered dream ? 

Or glimpse through aeons old .'' 
The secret which the mountains kept 

The river never told. a Mystery. 

274 



September 7. 

Buffon, 1707, 



September 8. 

Francis Bowen, 1811 ; William Cranch Bond, 1789. 



275 



September 9. 

Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth 

O'er the sloping hill, 
Beautiful and freshly springeth 

That soft-flowing rill, 
Through its dark roots wreathed and bare, 

Gushing up to sun and air. 

The Fountain. 

There be fountains gushing up in the hearts of 
such, sweeter than the springs of water which flow 
from the hillsides, where they sojourn ; and therein, 
also, flowers of the summer do blossom all the year 
long. Margaret Smith's Journal. 



September 10. 

Lovely to the homesick heart of Park seemed 
the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and 
simple song of welcome beside his bed, and sought 
to comfort the white stranger, who had " no mother 
to bring him milk and no wife to grind him corn." 

The Beautiful. 

And where the caravan 
Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in air 
The crane -flock leaves, no trace of passage there. 

He gives the weary eye 
The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon hours, 
And on its branches dry 
Calls out the acacia's flowers. To A. K. 

276 



September 9, 



September 10. 

Mmigo Park, 1771. 



277 



September ii. 

Drop thy still dews of quietness. 

Till all our strivings cease ; 
Take from our souls the strain and stress, 
And let our ordered lives confess 

The beauty of thy peace. 

The Brewing of Soma. 

And when the Angel of Shadow 
Rests his feet on wave and shore, 

And our eyes grow dim with watching 
And our hearts faint at the oar, 

Happy is he who heareth 

The signal of his release 
In the bells of the Holy City, 

The chimes of eternal peace ! 

The Red River Vovageur 



September 12. 

O loved of thousands ! to thy grave, 

Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren bore thee. 
The poor man and the rescued slave 

Wept as the broken earth closed o'er thee ; 
And grateful tears, like summer rain, 
Quickened its dying grass again ! 
And there, as to some pilgrim-shrine. 

Shall come the outcast and the lowly. 
Of gentle deeds and words of thine 

Recalling memories sweet and holy ! 

Thomas Shipley 
278 



September ii. 



September 12. 

Samuel J. May, 1797. 



279 



September 13. 

My outward ear fails me ; yet I seem to hear 
as formerly the sound of the wind in the pines. I 
close my eyes ; and the picture of my home is still 
before me. My Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

At times I long for gentler skies, 

And bathe in dreams of softer air, 
But homesick tears would fill the eyes 

That saw the Cross without the Bear. 
The pine must whisper to the palm, 
The north-wind break the tropic calm ; 
And with the dreamy languor of the Line, 
The North's keen virtue blend, and strength to 
beauty join. The Last Walk in Autumn. 



September 14. 

At last, a sudden night-storm tore 
The mountain veils asunder. 



Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang 

Good-morrow to the cotter ; 
And once again Chocorua's horn 

Of shadow pierced the water. 

Above his broad lake Ossipee, 
Once more the sunshine wearing. 

Stooped, tracing on that silver shield 

His grim armorial bearing. 

Among the Hills. 
280 



September 13. 



September 14. 



281 



September 15. 

Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past, 

And, turning from familiar sight and sound, 
Sadly and full of reverence let us cast 

A glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground, 
Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering 
round 
That dim, strange land of Eld, seem dying fast ; 
And that which history gives not to the eye, 
The faded coloring of Time's tapestry, 
Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush supply. 

The Bridal of Pennacook. 



September 16. 

From the clefts of mountain rocks. 
Through the dark of lowland firs, 

Flash the eyes and flow the locks 
Of the mystic Vanishers ! 

And the fisher in his skiff. 

And the hunter on the moss, 
Hear their call from cape and cliff, 

See their hands the birch-leaves toss. 

Wistful, longing, through the green 

Twilight of the clustered pines, 
In their faces rarely seen 

Beauty more than mortal shines. 

The Vanishers. 
282 



September 15. 

James F. Cooper, 1789; James G. Percival, 1795 



September i6. 



283 



September 17. 

Honor to the true man ever, who takes his Hfe 
in his hands, and, at all hazards, speaks the word 
which is given him to utter, whether men will hear 
or forbear, whether the end thereof is to be praise 
or censure, gratitude or hatred. It well may be 
doubted whether on that Sabbath day the angels of 
God, in their wide survey of His universe, looked 
upon a nobler spectacle than that of the minister 
of Newport, rising up before his slave-holding con- 
gregation, and demanding, in the name of the High- 
est, the " deliverance of the captive, and the open- 
ing of prison doors to them that were bound." 

Samuel Hopkins. 
• 

September 18. 

O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn, 

And not of sunset, forward, not behind, 

Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee 

bring 
All the old virtues, whatsoever things 
Are pure and honest and of good repute. 
But add thereto whatever bard has sung 
Or seer has told of when in trance and dream 
They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy ! 
Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide 
Between the right and wrong ; but give the heart 
The freedom of its fair inheritance. 

Prklude to Among the Hills. 
284 



September 17. 

Samuel Hopkins, 1721. 



September i8. 

Joseph Story, 1779. 



285 



September 19. 

In Hauff's " Fortunes of Fairy-Lore," the heroine 
complains, to her mother Fancy, that the world has 
grown uncomfortably wise, and that the very chil- 
dren who used to love her so dearly have become 
too knowing for their tender age, and, no longer 
capable of wonder, laugh at her stories and turn 
their backs upon her. Preface to Child Life. 



September 20. 

How has New England's romance fled, 

Even as a vision of the morning ! 
Its rites foredone, — its guardians dead, — 

Our witches are no longer old 

And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold, 

But young and gay and laughing creatures. 

With the heart's sunshine on their features, — 

Their sorcery — the light which dances 

Where the raised lid unveils its glances ; 

Or that low-breathed and gentle tone, 

The music of Love's twilight hours, 
Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan 

Above her nightly closing flowers, 
Sweeter than that which sighed of yore 
Along the charmed Ausonian shore ! 

EXTR.\CT FROM A NeW ENGLAND LEGEND. 
286 



September 19. 



September 20. 



287 



September 21. 

Even the wild gales of the equinox have their 
varieties. Yankee GvrsiE... 

Varied as varying Nature's ways, 
Sprites of the river, woodland fays, 

Or mountain nymphs, ye seem ; 
Free-limbed Dianas on the green. 
Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undine, 

Upon your favorite stream. 

The forms of which the poets told, 
The fair benignities of old, 

Were doubtless such as you. 

To 

♦— — 

September 22. 

He rose a man who laid him down a slave, 
Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave. 

And outward trod 
Into the glorious liberty of God. 

The PROCfcAMATION. 

O Lord, how long ! — One human soul 
Is more than any parchment scroll, 
Or any flag thy winds unroll. 

What price was Ellsworth's, young and brave ? 
How weigh the gift that Lyon gave. 
Or count the cost of Winthrop's grave ? 

The Watchers. 

28S 



September 21. 



September, 22. 

Emancipation Proclamation, 1862 ; Theodore Wintlirop, 1828- 



289 



September 23. 

The airs of spring may never play 

Among the ripening corn, 
Nor freshness of the flowers of May 

Blow through the autumn morn ; 
Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look 

Through fringed lids to heaven, 
And the pale aster in the brook 

Shall see its image given, Mv Psalm 

To loving eyes alone they turn 

The flowers of inward grace, that hide 

Their beauty from the world outside. 

The Pressed Gentian. 



September 24. 

Who shall say that we have not all the essentials 
of the poetry of human life and simple nature, of 
the hearth and the farm-field ? Robert Dinsmore. 

Whoso wisely wills and acts may dwell 
As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state. 
With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make 
His hour of leisure richer than a life 
Of fourscore to the barons of old time, 
Our yeoman should be equal to his home 
Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled, 
A man to match his mountains, not to creep 
Dwarfed and abased below them. 

Prelude to Among the Hills. 
200 



September 23. 

Jane Taylor, 1783. 



September 24. 



29Z 



September 25. 

To the infinite variety and picturesque inequal- 
ity of Nature we owe the great charm of her un- 
cloying beauty. Look at her primitive woods ; 
scattered trees, with moist sward and bright mosses 
at their roots. The Beautiful. 

Ask why the graceful grape entwines 
The rough oak with her arm of vines ; 
And why the gray rock's rugged cheek 
The soft lips of the mosses seek : 
Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems 
To harmonize her wide extremes ! 

The Bridal of Pennacook. 



September 26. 

And school-girls, gay with aster-flowers, beside the 

meadow brooks. 
Mingled the glow of autumn with the sunshine of 

sweet looks. ' The Huskers. 

With cheeks of russet-orchard tint, 

The light laugh of their native rills, 
The perfume of their garden's mint, 

The breezy freedom of the hills, 
They bore, in unrestrained delight. 
The motto of the Garter's knight. 
Careless as if from every gazing thing 
Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by his ring. 

The Tent on the Be.\ch. 
21J2 



September 25. 

Felicia D. Hemans, 1794. 



September 26. 



293 



September 27. 

Invisible and silent stands 

The temple never made with hands. 

The Meeting. 

It becomes all to hope and labor for the com- 
ing of that day when the hymns of Cowper and the 
Confessions of Augustine, the humane philosophy 
of Channing and the devout meditations of Thomas 
a Kempis, the simple essays of Woolman and the 
glowing periods of Bossuet, shall be regarded as 
the offspring of one spirit and one faith, — lights 
of a common altar, and precious stones in the 

temple of the one universal Church. 

Pope Night. 



September 28. 

Who, in her greenwood shade, 
Heard the sharp call that Freedom made, 
And, answering, struck from Sappho's lyre 
Of love the Tyrtaean carmen's fire. 

Lines on a Fly-Lhaf. 

I call to mind the fountains by the way, 
The breath of flowers, the bird-song on the spray, 
Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy of giving 
And of receiving, the great boon of living 

In grand historic years when Liberty 
Had need of word and worlc At Eventide. 

294 



September 27. 

Bossuet, 1627; Samuel Adams, 1722. 



September 28. 

Sara J. Lippincott (Grace Greenwood), 1823. 



295 



September 29. 

Erelong by lake and rivulet side 
The summer roses paled and died, 

And Autumn's fingers shed 

The maple's leaves of red. 

Through the long gold-hazed afternoon, 
Alone, but for the diving loon, 

The partridge in the brake. 

The black duck on the lake, 

Beneath the shadow of the ash 
Sat man and maid by Attitash ; 

And earth and air made room 

For human hearts to bloom. 

The Maids of Attitash. 



September 30. 

Flowers spring to blossom where she walks 

The careful ways of duty ; 
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her 

Are flowing curves of beauty. 

Our homes are cheerier for her sake, 
Our door-yards brighter blooming, 

And all about the social air 
Is sweeter for her coming. 

The still refreshment of the dew 

Is her unconscious teaching. 

Among the Hills. 
296 



September 29. 



September 30. 



297 



HAZEL BLOSSOMS. 

The summer warmth has left the sky, 
The summer songs have died away ; 
And, withered, in the footpaths He 
The fallen leaves, but yesterday 
With ruby and with topaz gay. 

The grass is browning on the hills ; 
No pale, belated flowers recall 
The astral fringes of the rills, 
And drearily the dead vines fall, 
Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall. 

Yet through the gray and sombre wood, 
Against the dusk of fir and pine, 
Last of their floral sisterhood, 
The hazel's yellow blossoms shine. 
The tawny gold of Afric's mine ! 



ICjS 



— • — 

THE CORN-SONG. 

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard ! 

Heap high the golden corn ! 
No richer gift has Autumn poured 

From out her lavish horn ! 

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers, 

Our plows their furrows made, 
While on the hills the sun and showers 

Of changeful April played. 

We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain, 

Beneath the sun of Mav, 
And frightened from our sprouting grain 

The robber crows away. 

All through the long, bright days of June 

Its leaves grew green and fair, 
And waved in hot midsummer's noon 

Its soft and yellow hair. 

And now, with autumn's moonlit eves, 

Its harvest-time has come. 
We pluck away the frosted leaves. 

And bear the treasure home. 
299 



October i. 

Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river 
valley, the western hills stretching to the horizon, 
overhung with trees gorgeous and glowing with the 
tints of autumn, — a mighty flo'wer-garden, blassom- 
mg under the spell of the enchanter, Frost. 

Pawtucket Falls. 

Autumn's earliest frost had given 

To the woods below 
Hues of beauty, such as heaven 

Lendeth to its bow ; 
And the soft breeze from the west 
Scarcely broke their dreamy rest. 

The Fountain. 



October 2. 

The Quaker, in the stillness of his self-commun- 
ing, remembers that there was " silence in heaven." 

The Better Land. 

Why idly seek from outward things 
The answer inward silence brings ; 
Why stretch beyond our proper sphere 
And age, for that which lies so near ? 
Why climb the far-off hills with pain, 
A nearer view of heaven to gain ? 
In lowliest depths of bosky dells 
The hermit Contemplation dwells. 

Questions of Life. 
300 



October i. 



October 2. 



301 



October 3. 

The scenes now passing before us will live in 
eternal reproduction, created anew at will. 

My Summer with Dr. Singletary. 

The continuity of life is never broken ; the river 
flows onward and is lost to our sight ; but under 
its new horizon it carries the same waters which it 
gathered under ours, aud its unseen valleys are 
made glad by the offerings which are borne down 
to them from the past, — flowers, perchance, the 
germs of which its own waves had planted on the 
banks of Time. Scottish Reformers. 



October 4. 

Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid 
His head against the West, whose warm light 
m.ade 
His aureole ; and o'er him, sharp and clear. 
Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launching stayed, 
A single level cloud-line, shone upon 
By the fierce glances of the sunken sun. 

Menaced the darkness with its golden spear ! 

Mountain Pictures. 

Naked lay, in sunshine glowing, 

Hills that once had stood 
Down their sides the shadows throwing 

Of a mighty wood. 

The Fountain. 
302 



October 3. 

George Bancroft, iSoo. 



October 4. 



303 



October 5. 

In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought, 

Shaping his creed at the forge of thought ; 

And with Thor's own hammer welded and bent 

The iron links of his argument, 

Which strove to grasp in its mighty span 

The purpose of God and the fate of man ! 

Yet faithful still, in his daily round 

To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found. 

The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art 

Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart. 

Had he not seen in the solitudes 

Of his deep and dark Northampton woods 

A vision of love about him fall ? The Preacher. 



October 6. 

The sweet persuasion of His voice 

Respects thy sanctity of will. 
He giveth day : thou hast thy choice 

To walk in darkness still ; 

As one who, turning from the light. 
Watches his own gray shadow fall, 

Doubting, upon his path of night, 
If there be day at all ! 

No word of doom may shut thee out, 
No wind of wrath may downward whirl, 

No swords of fire keep watch about 

The open gates of pearl. The Answer. 
304 



October 5. 

Jonathan Edwards, 1703. 



October 6. 



305 



October 7. 

A genial, jovial, large-hearted old man, simple as 

a child, and betraying, neither in look nor manner, 

that he was accustomed to 

" Feed on thoughts which voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers." 

Peace to him ! ... In the ancient burial-ground 

of Windham, by the side of his '* beloved Molly," 

and in view of the old meeting-house, there is a 

mound of earth, where, every spring, green grasses 

tremble in the wind, and the warm sunshine calls 

out the flowers. There, gathered like one of his 

own ripe sheaves, the farmer poet sleeps with his 

fathers. Robert Dinsmore. 

— • 

October 8. 

From East, from West, from South and North, 
The messages of hope shot forth, 
And, underneath the severing wave, 
The world, full-hanclsd, reached to save. 

Fair seemed the old ; but fairer still 
The new, the dreary void shall fill 
With dearer homes than those o'erthrown, 
For love shall lay each corner-stone. 

Rise, stricken city ! — from thee throw 

The ashen sackcloth of thy woe ; 

And build, as to Amphion's strain, 

To songs of cheer thy walls again ! Chicago. 



October 7. 

Robert Dinsmore, 1757, 



October 8. 

Chicago Fire, 1871. 



307 



October 9. 

The narrow room had vanished, — space, 
Broad, luminous, remained alone, 

Through which all hues and shapes of grace 
And beauty looked or shone. Raphael. 

The Beauty which old Greece or Rome 
Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home ; 

We need but eye and ear 
In all our daily walks to trace 
The outlines of incarnate grace, 

The hymns of gods to hear ! To 



October 10. 

The riches of the Commonwealth 

Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health ; 

And more to her than gold or grain, 

The cunning hand and cultured brain. 

Our State. 

Grinding on, each in his iron harness, invisible, 
yet shaking by his regulated and repressed power 
his huge prison-house from basement to capstone, 
is it true that the genii of mechanism are really at 
work here, raising us, by wheel and pulley, steam 
and water-power, slowly up that inclined plane 
from whose top stretches the broad table-land -of 
l^romise .-' The City of a Day. 

308 



October 9. 

Harriet G. Hosmer, i?3o. 



October 10. 

Daniel Treadwell, 1791 ; Benjamin West, 1738. 



309 



October ii. 

They heard the air above them fanned, 

A light step on the sward, 
And lo ! they saw before them stand 

The angel of the Lord ! 

" Arise," he said, " why look behind, 
When hope is all before, 
And patient hand and willing mind, 
Your loss may yet restore ? 

A Lay of Old Time. 
♦— 

October 12. 

Grateful smiles my lips unseal, 
As, remembering thee, I blend 
Olden teacher, present friend. 
Wise with antiquarian search, 
In the scrolls of State and Church : 

Threshing Time's neglected sheaves, 
Gathering up the scattered leaves 
Which the wrinkled sibyl cast 
Careless from her as she passed, — 

Time is hastening on, and we 
What our fathers are shall be, — 
Shadow-shapes of memory ! 
Joined to that vast multitude 
Where the great are but the good. 

To MY Old Schoolmaster. 
qro 



October ii. 



October 12. 

Joshua Coffin, 1792 ; Hugh Miller, 1802. 



3" 



October 13. 

A life that stands as all true lives have stood, 
Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good. 

Requirement. 

All hearts grew warmer in the presence 
Of one who, seeking not his own, 

Gave freely for the love of giving, 
Nor reaped for self the harvest sown. 

Thy greeting smile was pledge and prelude 
Of generous deeds and kindly words ; 

In thy large heart were fair guest-chambers, 
Open to sunrise and the birds ! 

A Memorial. 



October 14. 

Penn, while preaching up and down the land, and 
writing theological folios and pamphlets, could yet 
urge the political rights of Englishmen, mount the 
hustings for Algernon Sydney, and plead for un- 
limited religious liberty. Richard Baxter. 

All the foregleams of wisdom in santon and sage, 
In prophet and priest, are our true heritage. 
The Word which the reason of Plato discerned ; 
The truth, as whose symbol the Mithra-fire burned ; 
The soul of the world which the vStoic but guessed, 
In the Light Universal the Quaker confessed ! 

The Quaker Alumni. 
312 



October 13. 

Alpheus Crosby, 1810. 



October 14. 

William Penn, 1644c 



3^3 



October 15. 

More dear to me some song of private worth, 
vSome homely idyl of my native North, 
Some summer pastoral of her inland vales 
Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside tales 
Haunted by ghosts of unreturning sails, — 
Lost barks at parting hung from stem to helm 
With prayers of love like dreams on Virgil's elm. 

The Panorama. 

Not where they seem their signals fly, 
Their voices while we listen die. 

The Seeking of the Waterfall. 



October 16. 

What flecks the outer gray beyond 
The sundown's golden trail ? 

The white flash of a sea-bird's wing. 
Or gleam of slanting sail ? 

The Dead Ship of Harpswell. 

Thy symbol be the mountain-bird, 
Whose glistening quill I hold ; 

Thy home the ample air of hope. 
And memory's sunset gold ! 

In thee, let joy with duty join, 

And strength unite with love, 
The eagle's pinions folding round 
The warm heart of the dove ! 
On receiving an Eagle's Quill from Lake Superior. 

3M 



October 15. 

Virgil, 70 B. c. ; Allan Ramsay, 1686. 



October i6. 



315 



October 17. 

Soft spread the carpets of the sod, 
And scarlet-oak and golden-rod 

With blushes and with smiles 

Lit up the forest aisles. 

The mellow light the lake aslant, 
The pebbled margin's ripple-chant 

Attempered and low-toned, 

The tender mystery owned. 

And through the dream the lovers dreamed 
Sweet sounds stole in ^.nd soft lights streamed ; 

The sunshine seemed to bless, 

The air was a caress. 

The Maids of Attitash. 



October 18. 

Now let the merriest tales be told. 
And let the sweetest songs be sung 
That ever made the old heart young ! 

For now the lost has found a home ; 
And a lone hearth shall brighter burn, 
As all the household joys return ! 

O, pleasantly the harvest-moon. 
Between the shadow of the mows, 
Looked on them through the great elm-boughs ! 

The Witch's Daughter. 
316 



October 17. 



October 18. 



3^7 



October 19. 

The stream is brightest at its spring, 

And blood is not like wine ; 
Nor honored less than he who heirs 

Is he who founds a line. 

Amy Wentworth. 

When Freedom, on her natal day, 

Within her war rocked cradle lay, 

An iron race aromid her stood. 

Baptized her infant brow in blood ; 

And, through the storm which round her swept. 

Their constant ward and watching kept. 

The Moral Warfare. 

No seers were they, but simple men ; 
Its vast results the future hid. 

Lexington. 
♦ 

October 20. 

God's love and peace be with thee, where 
Soe'er this soft autumnal air 
Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair ! 

Whether through city casements comes 
Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms. 
Or, out among the woodland blooms, 

It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face. 
Imparting, in its glad embrace. 
Beauty to beauty, grace to grace ! 

Benedicite. 
318 



October 19. 

John Adams, 1735 ; Deborah Logan. 1761 



October 20. 



319 



October 21. 

Brainaid, who truly deserves the name of an 
American poet, has left behind him a ballad on the 
Indian legend of the black fox which haunted 
Salmon River, a tributary of the Connecticut. Its 
wild and picturesque beauty causes us to regret 
that more of the still lingering traditions of the 
red men have not been made the themes of his 
verse : — 

" The ball to kill that fox is run 

Not in a mould by mortals made ; 
The arrow which that fox should shun 
Was never shaped from earthly reed." 
Charms and Fairy Faith. 
—* 

October 22. 

A wizard of the Merrimack, — 
So old ancestral legends say, — 

Could call green leaf and blossom back 
To frosted stem and spray. 

The settler saw his oaken flail 

Take bud, and bloom before his eyes ; 
From frozen pools he saw the pale. 

Sweet summer lilies rise. 
To their old homes, by man profaned, 

Came the sad dryads, exiled long. 
And through their leafy tongues complained 

Of household use and wrong. 

Flowers in Winter. 
320 



October 21. 

John G. C. Brainard, 1796; Alphonse de Lamartine, 1792. 



October 22. 



321 



October 23. 

Know we not our dead are looking 

Downward with a sad surprise, 
All our strife of words rebuking 

With their mild and loving eyes ? 
Shall we grieve the holy angels ? Shall we cloud 

their blessed skies ? 

Let us draw their mantles o'er us 

Which have fallen in our way ; 
Let us do the work before us, 

Cheerly, bravely, while we may, 
Ere the long night-silence cometh, and with us it is 

not day ! Lines. 

♦ 

October 24. 

A faint, low murmur, rising and falling on the 
wind. Now it comes rolling in upon me wave after 
wave of sweet, solemn music. There was a grand 
organ swell ; and now it dies away as into the in- 
finite distance ; but I still hear it, — whether with 
ear or spirit I know not, — tlie very ghost of 
sound. My Summer with Dr. Singletarv. 

What sings the brook ? What oracle 
Is in the pine-tree's organ swell .'' 
What may the wind's low burden be ? 
The meaning of the moaning sea .'' 

Questions of Life. 
322 



October 23. 



October 24. 



323 



October 25. 

He who lies where the minster's groined arches 
curve down 

To the tomb-crowded transept of England's re- 
nown, 

The glorious essayist, by genius enthroned, 

Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all owned, — 

How vainly he labored to sully with blame 

The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his fame ! 

For the sake of his gifts, and the works that outlive 

him. 
And his brave words for freedom, we freely forgive 

him ! The Quaker Alumni. 

■ » 

October 26. 

What hast thou wrought for Right and Truth, 
For God and Man ? Mv Soul and I. 

The airs of heaven blow o'er me ; 
A glory shines before me 
Of what mankind shall be, — 
Pure, generous, brave, and free. 

A dream of man and woman 

Diviner but still human. 

Solving the riddle old. 

Shaping the Age of Gold ! 

My Triumph. 

324 



October 25. 

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1800. 



October 26. 



325 



October 27. 

O silent land, to which we move, 
Enough if there alone be love, 
And mortal need can ne'er outgrow 
What it is waiting to bestow ! 

O white soul ! from that far-off shore 
Float some sweet song the waters o'er, 
Our faith confirm, our fears dispel. 
With the old voice we loved so well ! 

The Singer. 



October 28. 

This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we 
spin. The Crisis. 

God blesses still the generous thought 
And still the fitting word He speeds 

And Truth, at his requiring taught. 

He quickens into deeds. Channing. 

Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day 
Which from the night shall drive thy peace away. 
In months of sun so live that months of rain 
Shall still be happy. Evermore restrain 
Evil and cherish good, so shall there be 
Another and a happier life for thee. Conduct. 

326 



October 27. 



October 28. 



327 



October 29. 

There came a change. The wild, glad mood 

Of unchecked freedom passed. 
Amid the ancient solitude 
Of unshorn grass and waving wood, 

And waters glancing bright and fast, 
A softened voice was in my ear. 
Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine 
The hunter lifts his head to hear, 
Now far and faint, now full and near — 

The murmur of the wind-swept pine. 

MoGG Megone. 
— • — 

October 30. 

What is really momentous and all-important with 
us is the present, by which the future is shaped and 
colored. The Better Land. 

The Present, the Present is all thou hast 

For thy sure possessing ; 
Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast 

Till it gives its blessing. 

My Soul and I. 

Wake, sleeper, from thy dream of ease. 
The great occasion's forelock seize ; 

And let the north-wind strong. 
And golden leaves of autumn, be 
Thy coronal of Victory 

And thy triumphal song. Pennsylvania. 
328 



October 29. 



October 30. 



329 



October 31. 

If it be true that, according to Cornelius Agrippa, 
" a wood fire doth drive away dark spirits," it is, 
nevertheless, also true that around it the simple 
superstitions of our ancestors still love to linger ; 
and there the half-sportful, half -serious charms of 
which I have spoken are oftenest resorted to. 

Within the circle of the light of the open fire 
safely might the young conjurers question destiny ; 
for none but kindly and gentle messengers from 
Wonderland could venture among them. And who 
of us, looking back to those long autumnal even- 
ings of childhood when the glow of the kitchen-fire 
rested on the beloved faces of home, does not feel 
that there is truth and beauty in what the quaint 
old author just quoted affirms ? " As the spirits 
of darkness grow stronger in the dark, so good 
spirits, which are angels of light, are multiplied and 
strengthened, not only by the divine light of the 
sun and stars, but also by the light of our common 
wood-fires." Charms and Fairy Faith. 



330 



October 31. 

Halloween. 



331 



THE HUSKERS. 

It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal 
rain 

Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with 
grass again ; 

The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the 
woodlands gay 

With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow- 
flowers of May. 

Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun 

rose broad and red. 
At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he 

sped ; 
Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and 

subdued, 
On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly 

pictured wood. 

There wrought the busy harvesters ; and many a 
creaking wain 

Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load of husk 
and grain ; 

Till broad and red, as when he rose, the sun sank 
down, at last, 

And like a merry guest's farewell, the day in bright- 
ness passed. 

332 



|5obem6er* 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN. 

O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands 

Plead with the leaden heavens in vain, 
I see, beyond the valley lands, 

The sea's long level dim with rain. 
Around me all things, stark and dumb. 
Seem praying for the snows to come, 
And, for the summer bloom and greenness gone. 
With winter's sunset lights and dazzling morn 
atone. 

Along the river's summer walk, 

The withered tufts of asters nod ; 
And trembles on its arid stalk 

The hoar plume of the golden -rod. 
And on a ground of sombre fir, 
And azure-studded juniper, 
The silver birch its buds of purple shows, 
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet 
wild-rose ! 



333 



November i. 

The sun rises through a soft and hazy atmosphere; 
the light mist-clouds melt gradually away before 
him ; and his noontide light rests warm and clear 
on still woods, tranquil waters, and grasses green 
with the late autumnal rams. Taking Comfort. 

Full long our feet the flowery ways 

Of peace have trod, 
Content with creed and garb and phrase : 
A harder path in earlier days 

Led up to God. Anniversary Poem. 



November 2. 

It was in a degree, at least, the influence of 
Stephen Grellet and William Allen .... that 
drew the attention of Alexander I. of Russia to the 
importance of taking measures for the abolition of 
Serfdom. Introduction to Woolmans Journal 

No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest 

Goaded from shore to shore ; 
No schoolmen, turning, in their classic quest, 

The leaves of empire o'er. 
Simple of faith, and bearing in their hearts 

The love of man and God, 
Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient marts, 

And Scythia's steppes, they trod. 

The Christian Tourists. 



November i. 

Sir Matthew Hale, 1609. 



November 2. 

Stephen Grellet, 1773, 



335 



November 3. 

The poetical literature of our country can scarcely 
be said to have a longer date than that of a single 
generation. It really commenced with Bryant's 
" Thanatopsis " and Dana's " Buccaneer." 

Songs of Three Centuries. 

We praise not now the poet's art, 
The rounded beauty of his song ; 

Who weighs him from his life apart 
Must do his nobler nature wrong. 

To Bryant on his Birthday. 



November 4. 

I would strive to reverence man as man, irre- 
spective of his birth-place. The City of a Day. 

Earnest words must needs be spoken 
When the warm heart bleeds or burns 

With its scorn of wrong, or pity 
P'or the wronged, by turns. 

What the Voice Said. 

Did we dare 
In our agony of prayer. 
Ask for more than He has done .'* 
When was ever his right hand 
Over any time or land 
Stretched as now beneath the sun ?• 

Laus Deo. 



November 3. 

William Cullen Bryant, 1794; Theodore Dwiglit Weld, 1803. 



November 4. 

Stephen C. Phillips, 1801 ; James Montgomery, 1771. 



3Z7 



November 5. 

Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet, 
In strong and hearty German. 

The Shoemakers. 

The tissue of the Life to be 

We weave with colors all our own. 

And in the field of Destiny 
We reap as we have sown. 

Still shall the soul around it call 

The shadows which it gathered here, 

And, painted on the eternal wall, 

The Past shall reappear. Raphael. 



November 6. 

From people to people the original God-given 
impulse towards civilization and perfection has been 
transmitted, as from Egypt to Greece, and thence 
to the Roman world. 

Recreations and Miscellanies. 

So welcome T from every source 
The tokens of that primal Force, 
Older than heaven itself, yet new 
As the young heart it reaches to. 
Beneath whose steady impulse rolls 
The tidal wave of human souls ; 
Guide, comforter, and inward word, 
The eternal spirit of the Lord ! Miriam. 
338 



November 5. 

Hans Sachs, 1494; Washington Allston, 1779. 



November 6. 

Cornelius C. Fehon, 1807. 



339 



November 7. 

" As sweet and good is young Kathleen 

As Eve before her fall ; " 
So sang the harper at the fair, 

So harped he in the hall. 

" O come to me, my daughter dear ! 
Come sit upon my knee, 
For looking in your face, Kathleen, 
Your mother's own I see ! " 

He smoothed and smoothed her hair away, 

He kissed her forehead fair ; 
It is my darling Mary's brow. 

It is my darling's hair ! Kathleen. 



November 8. 

Our faith in a better day for the race is strong. 

Fame and Glory. 

Transformed he saw them passing 

Their new life's portal ! 
Almost it seemed the mortal 

Put on the immortal. 
No more with the beasts of burden, 

No more with stone and clod, 
But crowned with glory and honor 

In the image of God ! 

Howard at Atlanta. 

340 



November 7. 



November 8. 

Oliver Otis Howard. 1830; William Wirt, 1772. 



341 



November 9. 

The brave old strife the fathers saw 
For Freedom calls for men again 
Like those who battled not in vain 

For England's Charter, Alfred's law ; 
And right of speech and trial just 

Wage in your name their ancient war 
With venal courts and perjured trust. 

God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late, 
They touch the shining hills of day ; 

• ••••«•• 

Ye have the future grand and great, 
The safe appeal of Truth to Time ! 

To Friends under Arrest. 



November 10. 

Smile not, fair unbeliever ! 

One man, at least, I know, 
Who might wear the crest of Bayard 

Or Sidney's plume of snow. 

True as the knights of story. 

Sir Lancelot and his peers, 
Brave in his calm endurance 

As they in tilt of spears. 

Wouldst know him now ? Behold him, 

The Cadmus of the blind, 
Giving the dumb lip language. 

The idiot clay a mind. The Hero. 

342 



November 9. 

Elijah P. Lovejoy, 1802 ; Samuel E. Sewall, 1799. 



November 10. 

Samuel Gridley Howe, 1801 ; Martin Luther, 1483. 



343 



November ii. 

Though flowers have perished at the touch 

Of Frost, the early comer, 
I hail the season loved so much, 

The good St. Martin's summer. 

My autumn time and Nature's hold 

A dreamy tryst together, 
And, both grown old, about us fold 

The golden-tissued weather. 

O stream of life, whose swifter flow 

Is of the end forewarning, 
Methinks thy sundown afterglow 

Seems less of night than morning ! 

St. Martin's Summer. 



November 12. 

The " Call to the Unconverted," and the " Saints' 
Everlasting Rest," belong to no time or sect. They 
speak the universal language of the wants and de- 
sires of the human soul. They take hold of the 
awful verities of life and death, righteousness and 
judgment to come. Through them the suffering 
and hunted minister of Kidderminster has spoken 
in warning, entreaty, and rebuke, or in tones of ten- 
derest love and pity, to the hearts of the genera- 
tions which have succeeded him. 

Richard Baxter. 

344 



November ii. 

St Martin's Summer ; Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1836. 



November 12. 

Richard Baxter, 1615; Amelia Opie, 1769. 



34 S 



November 13. 

The fourteen centuries fall away 

Between us and the Afric saint, 
And at hjs side we urge, to-day, 
The immemorial quest and old complaint. 

No outward sign to us is given, — 

From sea or earth comes no reply ; 

Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven 

He vainly questioned, bends our frozen sky. 

No victory comes of all our strife, — 

From all we grasp the meaning slips ; 
The Sphinx sits at the gate of life, 
With the old question on her awful lips. 

The Shadow and the Light. 



November 14. 

Slow fades the vision of the sky, 

The golden water pales. 
And over all the valley-land 

A gray-winged vapor sails. 

The flowers will blow, the river flow. 

When I no more return. 
No whisper from the mountain pine 

Nor lapsing stream shall tell 
The stranger, treading where I tread, 
Of him who loved them well. 

Sunset on the Beakcamp. 
346 



November 13. 

St Augustine, 354. 



November 14. 



347 



November 15. 

The terse realism of the " Buccaneer," with its 
stern pictures of life and nature drawn with few 
strokes sharp and vigorous as those of Retzsch's 
outlines, left the weak imitators of an artificial 
school without an audience. 

Songs of Three Centuries. 

As Niirnberg sang while Wittenberg defied, 
And Kranach painted by his Luther's side. 
And through the war-march of the Puritan 
The silver stream of Marvell's music ran, 
So let the household melodies be sung, 
The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung. 

Amy Wentworth. 



November 16. 

And cheering echoes shall reply 
From the hoar Alps, which sentinel 
The gateways of the land of Tell, 
"Where morning's keen and earliest glance 
On Jura's rocky wall is thrown. 

The World's Convention. 

The home-pressed question of the age can find 
No answer in the catch-words of the blind 
Leaders of blind. Solution there is none 
Save in the Golden Rule of Christ alone. 

The Problem. 
348 



November 15. 

Richard H. Dana, 1787 ; Andrew Marvell, 1620. 



November i6. 

Battle of Morgarten, 1315; John Bright, 1811. 



349 



November -i; 7. 

Nor fear I aught that science brings 

From searching through material things ; 

Content to let its glasses prove, 

Not by the letter's oldness move, 

The myriad worlds on worlds that course 

The spaces of the universe ; 

Since everywhere the Spirit walks 

The garden of the heart, and talks 

With man, as under Eden's trees. 

In all his varied languages. Miriam. 



November i8. 

The myrtle with its snowy bloom, 
Crossing the nightshade's solemn gloom, — 
The white cecropia's silver rind 
Relieved by deeper green behind, — 
The orange with its fruit of gold, — 
The lithe paullinia's verdant fold, — 
The passion-flower, with symbol holy. 
Twining its tendrils long and lowly ! 

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 

As in the old Teutonic ballad 

Live singing bird and flowering tree. 

Together live in bloom and music, 
I blend in song thy flowers and thee. 

The First Flowers 



I 

November 17. 



November 18. 

Asa Gray, iSio. 



351 



November 19. 

Our voices take 
A sober tone ; our very household songs 
Are heavy with a nation's griefs and wrongs ; 
And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake 
Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall beat, 
The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning feet ! 

To S. E. AND H. W. S. 

If, for the age to come, this hour 
Of trial hath vicarious power. 
And, blest by Thee, our present pain 
Be liberty's eternal gain, 
Thy will be done ! 

Thy Will be done. 



November 20. 

God's hand within the shadow lays 
The stones whereon His gates of praise 
Shall rise at last. 

Yet trouble springs not from the ground, 

Nor pain from chance ; 
The Eternal order circles round, 
And wave and storm find mete and bound 

In Providence. Anniversary Poem. 



352 



November 19. 

James A. Garfield, 1831. 



November 20. 



353 



November 21. 

" The squirrel lifts his little legs 
Because he has no hands, and begs ; 
He 's asking for my nuts, I know : 
May I not feed them on the snow ? " 

She dropped for bird and beast forlorn 
Her little store of nuts and corn, 
And thus her timid guests bespoke : 
" Come, squirrel, from your hollow oak, — 
Come, black old crow, — come, poor blue-jay, 
Before your supper 's blown away ! 
Don't be afraid, we all are good ; 
And I 'm mamma's Red Riding-Hood ! " 

Red Riding-Hood. 
• ■■ 

November 22. 
O Thou whose care is over all. 
Who heedest even the sparrow's fall, 
Keep in the little maiden's breast 
The pity which is now its guest ! 
Let not her cultured years make less 
The childhood charm of tenderness ! 

Unmoved by sentimental grief 
That wails along some printed leaf, 
But, prompt with kindly word and deed 
To own the claims of all who need, 
Let the grown woman's self make good 
The promise of Red Riding-Hood ! 

Red Riding-Hood. 

354 



November 21. 



November 22. 



355 



November 23. 

Very serious and impressive is the fact that this 
idea of a radical change in our planet is not only 
predicted in the Scriptures, but that the Earth her- 
self, in her primitive rocks and varying formations, 
on which are lithographed the history of successive 
convulsions, darkly prophesies of others to come. 

The World's End. 

My spirit bows in gratitude 
Before the Giver of all good, 
Who fashioned so the human mind, 
That, from the waste of Time behind 
A simple stone, or mound of earth, 
Can summon the departed forth ; 

And in their primal freshness show 
The buried forms of long ago. 

The Norsemf.n. 
♦— 

November 24. 

Give and receive ; go forth and bless 

The world that needs the hand and heart 
Of Martha's helpful carefulness 

No less than Mary's better part. 
So shall the stream of time flow by 

And leave each year a richer good, 
And matron loveliness outvie 

The nameless charm of maidenhood. 

At School-Closs. 



November 23. 



November 24. 



357 



November 25. 

On Autumn's gray and mournful grave the snow 
Hung its white wreaths ; with stifled voice and low 
The river crept, by one vast bridge o'ercrossed, 
Built by the hoar-locked artisan of Frost. 

And many a Moon in beauty newly born 
Pierced the red sunset with her silver horn, 
Or, from the east, across her azure field 
Rolled the wide brightness of her full-orbed shield. 

At Pennacook. 



November 26. 

Forever round the Mercy-seat 
The guiding lights of Love shall burn. 

The Answer. 

Thou hast seen two streamlets gushing 

From one fountain, clear and free. 

But by widely varying channels 

Searching for the sea. 

What the Voice Said. 

And, if the tender ear be jarred 

That, haply, hears by turns 
The saintly harp of Olney's bard, 

The pastoral pipe of Burns, 
No discord mars His perfect plan 

Who gave them both a tongue j 
For he who sings the love of man 

The love of God hath sung ! 
« Burns Festival. 



NoVExMBER 2?. 



November 26. 

William Cowper, 1731 ; Sarah Moore Grimke, 1792 



359 



November 27. 

The oak has fallen ! 
"While, meet for no good work, the vine 
May yet its worthless branches twine. 
Who knoweth not that with thee fell 
A great man in our Israel ? 
Fallen, while thy loins were girded still, 

Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet, 

And in thy hand retaining yet 
The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell ! 

Daniel Wheeler. 

I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise. 
Assured alone that life and death 

His mercy underlies. 

The Eternal Goodness. 



November 28. 

The threads our hands in blindness spin 
No self-determined plan weaves in ; 
The shuttle of the unseen powers 
Works out a pattern not as ours. 

Ah ! small the choice of him who sings 
What soinid shall leave the smitten strings ; 
Fate holds and guides the hand of art ; 
The singer's is the servant's part. 

Over-ruled. 
360 



November 27. 

Daniel Wheeler, 1771- 



November 28. 

V/illiam Blake, 1757- 



361 



November 29. 

O for the white plume floating 

Sad Zutphen's field above, — 

The lion heart in battle, 

The woman's heart in love ! 

The Hero. 

Every question which was thrown up before him 
by the waves of political or moral agitation he 
measured by his standard of right and truth, and 
condemned or advocated it, in utter disregard of 
prevailing opinions. William Leggett. 

Wherever rise the peoples, 

Wherever sinks a throne, 
The throbbing heart of Freedom finds 

An answer in his own. The Hero. 



November 30. 

Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine. 
Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than 

thine ! 
And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to ex- 
press, 
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less, 
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below. 
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine 

grow, 
And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky 
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie ! 

The Pumpkin. 
362 



November 29. 

Sir Philip Sidney, 1554; Wendell Phillips, i8ir. 



November 30. 



363 



THE PUMPKIN. 

Ah ! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and 

from West, 
From North and from South come the pilgrim and 

guest, 
When the gray-haired New-Englander sees round 

his board 
The old broken links of affection restored. 
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once 

more, 
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled 

before, 
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye. 
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin 

pie ? 

O, — fruit loved of boyhood! — the old days re- 
calling, 

When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts 
were falling ! 

When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, 

Glaring out through the dark with a candle within ! 

When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts 
all in tune, 

Our chair a broad pumpkin, — our lantern the 
moon, 

Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam, 

In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her 
team ! 

364 



SDcceinficr* 



SNOW-BOUND. 

The sun that brief December day 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 

• ••••••• 

In tiny spherule traced with lines 

Of Nature's geometric signs, 

In starry flake, and pellicle, 

All day the hoary meteor fell ; 

And, when the second morning shone, 

We looked upon a world unknown, 

On nothing we could call our own. 

• ••••••• 

The old familiar sights of ours 

Took marvellous shapes ; strange domes and 

towers 
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood ; 
A smooth white mound the brush -pile showed, 
A fenceless drift what once was road ; 
The bridle-post an old man sat 
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat ;;, 
The well curb had a Chinese roof ; 
And even the long sweep, high aloof, 
In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 
Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 
365 



December i. 

Better to stem with heart and hand 
The roaring tide of life, than lie, 
Unmindful, on its flowery strand. 
Of God's occasions drifting by ! 
Better with naked nerve to bear 
The needles of this goading air, 
Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego 
The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know. 

Last Walk in Autumn. 

December 2. 

With clearer light, Cross of the South, shine forth 
In blue Brazilian skies ; 

And thou, great-hearted ruler, through whose 
mouth 

The word of God is said, 
Once more, " Let there be light ! " — 
Son of the South, 

Lift up thy honored head, 
Wear unashamed a crown by thy desert 

More than by birth thy own, 
Careless of watch and ward ; thou art begirt 

By grateful hearts alone. 

• ••••••"» 

Thy future is secure ; 
Who frees a people makes his statue's place 
In Time's Valhalla sure. Freedom in Brazil. 

.-.66 



December i. 



December 2. 

Pedro II., 1825. 



367 



December 3. 

We need, methinks, the prophet-hero still, 
Saints true of life, and martyrs strong of will, 
To tread the land, even now, as Xavier trod 

The streets of Gpa, barefoot, with his bell, 
Proclaiming freedom in the name of God. 

The Men of Old. 

Still all attuned to nature's melodies. 

He loved the bird's song in his dooryard trees, 

And the low hum of home-returning bees. 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 



December 4. 

Revive the old heroic will ; 

Be in the right as brave and strong 
As ye have proved yourselves in wrong. 

Then buried be the dreadful past, 

Its common slain be mourned, and let 
All memories soften to regret. 

Then shall the Union's mother-heart 
Her lost and wandering ones recall, 
Forgiving and restoring all, — 

And Freedom break her marble trance 
Above the Capitolian dome. 
Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome home ! 
To THE Thirty-ninth Congress. 
368 



December 3. 

St. Francis Xavier (d.), 15S2 ; Robert Bloomfield, 1766. 



December 4. 

Assembling of the Thirty-ninth Congress, 1865. 



369 



December 5. 

The moon above the eastern wood 

Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood 

Transfigured in the silver flood, 

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 

Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 

Took shadow, or the sombre green 

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 

Against the whiteness at their back. 

For such a world and such a night 

Most fitting that unwarming light. 

Which only seemed where'er it fell 

To make the coldness visible. Snow-Bound. 



December 6. 

Quench the timber's fallen embers. 
Quench the red leaves in December's 

Hoary rime and chilly spray. 
But the hearth shall kindle clearer. 
Household welcomes sound sincerer, 
Heart to loving heart draw nearer, 

When the bridal bells shall say : 

*' Hope and pray, trust alway ; 
Life is sweeter, love is dearer, 

For the trial and delay ! " The Ranger. 



370 



December 5. 



December 6. 



371 



December 7. 

The great charm of Scottish poetry consists in 
its simplicity, and genuine, unaffected sympathy 
with the common joys and sorrows of daily life. It 
is a home-taught, household melody. It calls to 
mind the pastoral bleat on the hillsides, the kirk- 
bells of a summer Sabbath, the song of the lark in 
the sunrise. ' Robert Dinsmore. 

Sweet airs of love and home, the hum 

Of household melodies, 
Come singing, as the robins come 

To sing in door-yard trees. 
And, heart to heart, two nations lean, 

No rival wreaths to twine, 
But blending in eternal green 

The holly and the pine ! 

Burns Festival. 

• 

December 8. 

The wind blew east ; we heard the roar 
Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 
Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 

What matter how the night behaved ? 
What matter how the north-wind raved ? 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 

Snow-Bound. 
372 



December 7. 

Allan Cunningham, 1784. 



December 8. 



373 



December 9. 

The spirit of the stern old republican remained 
to the last unbroken. The Training. 

Think ye the notes of holy song 
On Milton's tuneful ear have died ? 

Think ye that Raphael's angel throng 
Has vanished from his side .'' 

O no ! — We live our life again ; 

Or warmly touched, or coldly dim, 
The pictures of the Past remain, — 

Man's works shall follow him ! 

Raphael. 

• 

December 10. 

From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew 
We heard a tender undersong ; 

Thy very wrath from pity grew, 

From love of man thy hate of wrong. 

Now past and present are as one ; 

The life below is life above ; 
Thy mortal years have but begun 

The immortality of love. 

Go, leave behind thee all that mars 
The work below of man for man ; 
With the white legions of the stars 
Do service such as angels can. 

Garrison. 
374 



December 9. 

John Milton, 1608. 



December ro. 

William Lloyd Garrison, 1805. 



375 



December ii. 

Here, where the forest opens southward, 

Between its hospitable pines, 

As through a door, the warm sun shines. 

The Pageant. 

So, in those winters of the soul, 

By bitter blasts and drear 
O'erswept from Memory's frozen pole, 

Will sunny days appear. 
Reviving Hope and Faith, they show 

The soul its living powers, 
And how beneath the winter's snow 

Lie germs of summer ilowers ! 

A Dream of Summer. 



December 12. 

It is not ours to separate 

The tangled skein of will and fate, 

To show what metes and bounds should stand 

Upon the soul's debatable land, 

And between choice and Providence 

Divide the circle of events ; 

But He who knows our frame is just, 
Merciful and compassionate. 
And full of sweet assurances 
And hope for all the language is, 

That He remembereth we are dust ! 

Snow-Bound. 
Z7^ 



December ti. 



December 12. 

John Jay, 1745; Frederick H. Hedge, 1805- 



377 



December 13. 

The Churchman, listening to the solemn chant of 
vocal music or the deep tones of the organ, thinks 
of the song of the elders and the golden harps of 
the New Jerusalem, The Better Land. 

The harp at Nature's advent strung 

Has never ceased to play ; 
The song the stars of morning sung 

Has never died away. 

The blue sky is the temple's arch, 

Its transept earth and air. 
The music of its starry march 

The chorus of a prayer. 

Tent on the Beach. 

• 

December 14. 

What miracle of weird transforming 

In this wild work of frost and light, 
This glimpse of glory infinite ! 

This foregleam of the Holy City 

Like that to him of Patmos given, 

The white bride coming down from heaven I 

Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb, 

Burns unconsumed : a white, cold fire 
Rays out from every grassy spire. 

The Pageant. 
378 



December 13. 

Phillips Brooks, 1835, 



December 14. 



379 



December 15. 

Beautiful in her holy peace as one 

Who stands, at evening, when the work is done, 

Glorified in the setting of the sun ! 

Her memory makes our common landscape seem 

Fairer than any of which painters dream, 

Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream ; 

For she whose speech was always truth's pure gold 
Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told, 
And loved with us the beautiful and old. 

Introduction to Home Ballads. 



December 16. 

Lo ! By the Merrimack Whitefield stands 

In the temple that never was made by hands, — 

Curtains of azure, and crystal wall, 

And dome of the sunshine over all ! — 

A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name 

Blown about on the winds of fame ; 

Now as an angel of blessing classed, 

And now as a mad enthusiast. 

The Preacher. 

Ours the old, majestic temple, 
Where God's brightness shines 

Down the dome so grand and ample, 
Propped by lofty pines ! 

The Lumbermen. 

380 



December 15. 

Mary May, 1788. 



December i6. 

George Whitefield, 1714; Jane Austen, 1775. 



381 



December 17. 

I love the old melodious lays 

Which softly melt the ages through, 

The songs of Spenser's golden days, 
Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, 

Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning 
dew. 

O Freedom ! if to me belong 

Nor mighty Milton's gift divine. 

Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, 
Still with a love as deep and strong 

As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy 
shrine ! Proem. 

O East and West ! O morn and sunset twain 
No more forever ! — has he lived in vain 
Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and told 
Your bridal service from his lips of gold ? 

Thomas Starr King. 



December 18. 

How the great guns, peal on peal, 
Fling the joy from town to town ! 
Ring and swing. 
Bells of joy ! On morning's wing 
Send the song of praise abroad ! 
With a sound of broken chains 
Tell the nations that He reigns, 
Who alone is Lord and God ! Laus Deo. 

382 



December 17. 

John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807; Thomas Starr King, 1824. 



December i8. 

Constitutional Amendment abolishing Slavery, 1865. 



383 



December 19. 

By his life alone, 
Gracious and sweet, the better way was shown. 

The Pennsylvania Pilgkim. 

The holiest task by Heaven decreed. 

An errand all divine, 
The burden of our common need 

To render less is thine. The Healer. 

For man the living temple is : 
The mercy-seat and cherubim. 

And all the holy mysteries, 
He bears with him. 

The Hermit of the Thebaid. 



December 20. 

Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door, 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
The merrier up its roaring draught 
The great throat of the chimney laughed. 

Snow-Bound. 

384 



December 19. 

John Ware, 1795; Edwin M. Stanton, 1814. 



December 20. 



385 



December 21. 

The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day 

Its shadow round us draws ; 
The Mayflower of his stormy bay, 

Our Freedom's struggling cause. 

But warmer suns erelong shall bring 

To life the frozen sod ; 
And, through dead leaves of hope, shall spring 

Afresh the flowers of God ! 

So live the fathers in their sons, 

Their sturdy faith be ours, 
And ours the love that overruns 

Its rocky strength with flowers. 

The May-flowers. 



December 22. 

Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace ; 
East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel 

cease : 
Sing the song of great joy that the angels began, 
Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man ! 

Hark ! joining in chorus 

The heavens bend o'er us ! 
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun. 

A Christmas Carmen. 
386 . 



December 21. 

Landing of the Pilgrims, 1620. 



December 22. 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1823. 



387 



December 23. 

What sang the bards of old ? What meant 
The prophets of the Orient ? 
The rolls of buried Egypt, hid 
In painted tomb and pyramid ? 
What mean Idiimea's arrowy lines, 
Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs ? 
How speaks the primal thought of man 
From the grim carvings of Copan ? 

In vain to me the Sphinx propounds 
The riddle of her sights and sounds ; 
Back still the vaulted mystery gives 
The echoed question it receives. 

Questions of Life. 

• 

December 24. 

Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight sinks the 

stone, 
In the deep sea of time, but the circles sweep on. 
Till the low-rippled murmurs along the shores run, 
And the dark and dead waters leap glad in the sun. 

Meanwhile shall we learn, in our ease, to forget 
To the martyrs of Truth and of Freedom our 

debt.? — 
Hide their words out of sight, like the garb that 

they wore. 
And for Barclay's Apology offer one more ? 

The Quaker Alumni. 
388 



December 23. 

Jean Francois Champollion, 1790; Robert Barclay, 1648. 



December 24. 



389 



December 25. 

The Christian, whose inward eyes and ears are 
touched by God, discerns the coming of Christ, 
hears the sound of his chariot- wheels and the voice 
of his trumpet, when no other perceives them. 

The World's End. 

In vain shall waves of incense drift 

The vaulted nave around, 
In vain the minster turret lift 

Its brazen weights of sound. 
The heart must ring thy Christmas bells, 

Thy inward altars raise ; 
Its faith and hope thy canticles, 

And its obedience praise ! 

Our Master. 



December 26. 

Nature does not, as far as I can perceive, work 

with square and compass, She eschews 

regular outlines. She does not shape her forms by 
a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous 
progeny in all respects resembles her who first 
culled the flowers of Eden. The Beautiful. 

Her presence lends its warmth and health 

To all who come before it. 
If woman lost us Eden, such 

As she alone restore it. 

Among the Hills. 



December 25. 

Sir Isaac Newton, 1642. 



December 26. 

Maiy Somerville, 1780; Thomas Gray, 1716. 



391 



December 27. 

Above, below, in sky and sod, 
In leaf and spar, in star and man, 
Well might the wise Athenian scan 

The geometric signs of God, 
The measured order of his plan. 

• •••■ ••• 

The theme befitting angel tongues 
Beyond a mortal's scope has grown. 
O heart of mine ! with reverence own 
The fulness which to it belongs. 

And trust the unknown for the known. 

The Over-heart. 
♦ 

December 28. 

To a generation as eager as the ancient Athe- 
nians for some new thing, simple legends of the 
past .... have undoubtedly lost in a great degree 
their interest. The lore of the fireside is becoming 
obsolete, and with the octogenarian few who still 
linger among us will perish the unwritten history 
of border life in New England. 

The Boy Captives. 

Where be now these silent hosts .'' 
Where the camping-ground of ghosts ? 
Where the spectral conscripts led 
To the white tents of the dead ? 

The Grave by the Lake. 



December 27. 

John Kepler, 1571 ; Oliver Johnson, i8og. 



December 28. 

Catharine M. Sedgwick, 1789, 



393 



December 29. 

Then one, the beauty of whose eyes 
Was evermore a great surprise, 
Tossed back her queenly head, 
And, lightly laughing, said, — 

No bridegroom's hand be mine to hold 
That is not lined with yellow gold ; 

I tread no cottage-floor ; 

I own no lover poor. 



" My love must come on silken wings, 

of diamond rings." 
The Maids of Attitash. 



With bridal lights of diamond rings 



December 30. 

The other, on whose modest head 
Was lesser dower of beauty shed, 

With look for home-hearths meet. 

And voice exceeding sweet, 

Answered, — " We will not rivals be ; 

Take thou the gold, leave love to me ; 
Mine be the cottage small, 
And thine the rich man's hall. 

" I know, indeed, that wealth is good ; 
But lowly roof and simple food, 
With love that hath no doubt, 
Are more than gold without." 

The Maids of Attitash. 

394 



December 29. 



December 30. 



395 



December 31. 

A lettered magnate, lording o'er 
An eve»-widening realm of books. 

The old, dead authors thronged him round about, 
And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves 
looked out. 

Pleasant it was to roam about 

The lettered world as he had done, 
And see the lords of song without 

Their singing robes and garlands on. 
With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere, 
Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer, 
And with the ears of Rogers, at four-score. 
Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit 
once more. The Tent on the Beach. 

The day is breaking in the East of which the 

prophets told, 
And brightens up the sky of Time the Christian 

Age of Gold ; 
Old Might to Right is yielding, battle blade to 

clerkly pen, 
Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and her serfs 

stand up as men ; 
The isles rejoice together, in a day are nations 

born, 
And the slave walks free in Tunis, and by Stam- 

boul's Golden Horn ! The Crisis. 

396 



December 31. 

James T. Fields, 1817; Alexander II., 181S 



397 



MY BIRTHDAY. 

Beneath the moonlight and the snow 

Lies dead my latest year ; 
The winter winds are wailing low 
• Its dirges in my ear. 

I grieve not With the moaning wind 

As if a loss befell ; 
Before me, even as behind, 

God is, and all is well ! 



398 



INDEX OF NAMES. 



Abbot, Ezra, 129. 
Adams, John, 3iq. 
Adams, John Quincy, 211. 
Adams, Samuel, 295. 
Addison, Joseph, 135. 
Agassiz, Louis, 161. 
Aldrich, Thomas B., 345. 
Alexander II., 397. 
Allston, Washington, 339. 
Andersen, Hans C, 103. 
Andrew, Tohn A-, 165. 
Arago, F.-J. D., 6t. 
Arnold, Thomas, 181. 
Augustine, St., 347. 
Austen, Jane, 381. 
Bacon, Francis, 23. 
Bancroft, George, 303. 
Barclay, Robert, 389. 
Barnard, F. A. P., 139. 
Bartlett, Wm. F., 173. 
Barton, Bernard, 33. 
Baxter, Richard, 345. 
Benezet, Anthony, 33. 
Berkeley, George, 79. 
Blake, William, 361. 
Bloomfield, Robert, 369. 
Bodley, Sir Thos., 69. 
Bond, William C., 275. 
Bonheur, Rosa, 89. 
Boniface, St., 187. 
Bossuet, Jacques B., 295. 
Bowditch, Nathaniel, 93. 



Bovven, Francis, 275. 
Brainard, John G. C., 321. 
Bremer, Frederika, 251. 
Bright, John, 349. 
Brooks, Phillips, 379. 
Brown, Chas. Brockden, 19. 
Brown, John, 143. 
Bryant, Wm. Cullen, 337. 
Buckminster, Joseph, 159. 
Buena Vista, Battle of, 59. 
Buffon, 275. 

Bunker Hill, Battle of, 185. 
Butiyan, John, 265. 
Burns, Robert, 27. 
Calvin, John, 209. 
Campbell, Archibald, 197. 
Campbell, Thomas, 227. 
Carlisle, Earl of, 119. 
Cary, Alice, 127. 
Cary, Phoebe, 271. 
Chalkley, Thomas, 71. 
Champollion, Jean F., 389. 
Channing, William E., 109. 
Cheever, Geo. B., 119. 
Chicago Fire, 307. 
Child, Lydia M., 47. 
Clarkson, Thomas, 95. 
Clough, Arthur H., 3. 
Coffin, Joshua, 311. 
Confucius, 187. 
Congress, 39th, 369. 
Const. Amendment, 383. 



399 



INDEX OF NAMES. 



Cooper, James F., 283. 
Copley, John S., 203. 
Cowper, William, 359. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 127. 
Crosby, Alpheus, 313. 
Cunningham, Allan, 373. 
Curtis, George W., 59. 
Cushman, Charlotte, 223. 
Cuvier, 257. 

Dana, Richard H., 349. 
Dante, 161. 
Dark Day, 153. 
Darwin, Chas. R., 47. 
Decoration Day, 163. 
DeTocqueville, H. A., 229. 
D'Iberville, L., 241. 
Dinsmore, Robert, 307. 
Dix, D. L., 105. 
Doddridge, Philip, 193. 
Eaton, William, 59. 
Edgeworth Maria, 3. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 305. 
Elliott, Ebenezer, 85. 
Emancipation Proc, 3, 289. 
Emerson, Ralph W., 159. 
Emmons, Nathaniel, 135. 
Endicott, John, 83. 
Farragut, David G., 205. 
Farrar, John, 201. 
Felton, Cornelius C. 339. 
Fenelon, 239. 
Fields, James T., 397. 
Flaxman, John, 205. 
Follen, Charles, 271. 
Follen, EHza Lee, 249. 
Forster, William, 91. 
Fox, George, 89. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 19. 
Franklin, Sir John, 117. 
Freeman, James, 123. 
Fremont, John C., 23. 
Fry, Elizabeth, 155. 
Furness, William H., 121. 
Galileo, 215. 



Garfield, James A., 353. 
Garibaldi, 221. 
Garrett, Thomas, 255. 
Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, 375. 
Gray, Asa, 351. 
Gra)', Thomas, 391. 
Grellet, Stephen, 335. 
Grimke, Sarah M., 359. 
Gurney, Joseph J., 235. 
Hale, John P., 99. 
Hale, Sir Matthew, 335. 
Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 207. 
Halliday, David, 57. 
Halloween, 331. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 13. 
Havelock, Sir Henry, 107. 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 203. 
Hayes, Isaac I., 73. 
Hedge, Frederick H., 377. 
Hemans, Felicia D., 293. 
Henry, Patrick, 163. 
Herbert, George, 105. 
Herschel, Caroline L., 83. 
Higginson, Thomas W., 387. 
Hoar, Samuel, 151. 
Hogg, James, 27. 
Holmes, Oliver W., 263. 
Hood, Thomas, 157. 
Hooper, Lucy, 39. 
Hopkins, Samuel, 285. 
Hosmer, Harriet G., 309. 
Howard, John, 269. 
Howard, Oliver O., 341. 
Howe, Samuel G., 343- 
Howells, William D. , 69. 
Hugo, Victor, 61. 
Hunt, William M., 99. 
Independence declared, 

203. 
Independence resolved, 201. 
Irving, Washington, 105. 
Jackson, Andrew, 83. 
Jackson. Francis, 75. 
Jackson, Thomas J., 23. 



400 



INDEX OF NAMES. 



Jay, John, 377- 
Jay, William, 1S3. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 103. 
Johnson, Oliver, 393. 
Jonson, Ben, 179. 
Kane, Elisha Kent, 39. 
Keble, John, 127. 
Kepler, John, 393. 
King, Thomas Starr, 383. 
Kossuth, Louis, 129. 
Labrador discovered, 191. 
Lafayette, 273. 

Lamartine, Alphonse de, 321. 
Lamb, Charles, 53. 
La Tour, Defence of, 115 
Lexington, Battle of, 121. 
Lieber, Francis, 85. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 47. 
Linnasus, 157. 
Lippincott, Sara J., 295. 
Livingstone, David, 87. 
Logan, Deborah, 319. 
Longfellow, Heni^y W., 63. 
Loring, Ellis Gray, 115. 
L'Ouverture, T., 137. 
Lovejoy, Elijah P., 343. 
Lovejoy, Owen, 7. 
Lowell, James R., 57. 
Lowell, Maria, 207. 
Lundy, Benjamin, 5. 
Luther, Martin, 343. 
Macaulay, Thos. B,, 325. 
Madison, James, 73. 
Magna Charta, 183. 
Mann, Horace, 137. 
Marston Moor, 201. 
Martineau, Harriet, 179. 
Marvell, Andrew, 349. 
Mather, Cotton, 47. 
May, Mary, 381. 
May, Samuel, 113. 
May, Samuel J., 279. 
Michael Angelo, 73. 
T^AIiller, Hugh, 311. 



Milton, John, 375. 
Mitchell, Maria, 235. 
Monod, Adolphe, 23. 
Monroe, James, 129. 
Montgomery, James, 337. 
More, Sir Thomas, 43. 
Morgarten, Battle of, 349. 
Morse, Samuel F. B., 129. 
Motley, John Lothrop, 117. 
Mott, Lucretia, 5. 
Mozart, 29. 
Neal, John, 259. 
Neall, Daniel, 25. 
Nev/ton, Sir Isaac, 391. 
O'CoNNELL, Daniel, 239. 
Opie, Amelia, 345. 
Ossoii, Margaret F., 157. 
Otis, James, 41. 
Ovid, 87. 

Palfrey, John G., 135. 
Park, Mungo, 277. 
Parker, Theodore, 257, 
Parsons, Emily E., 75. 
Parsons, Theophilus, 59. 
Pedro II., 367. 
Peirce, Benjamin, 105. 
Penn, William, 313. 
Pennsylvania Hall, 151. 
Percival, James G., 283. 
Phillips, Stephen C, 337. 
PhilHps, Wendell, 363. 
Pierpont, John, 107. 
Pilgrims, Landing of the, 387. 
Plato, 155. 

Pourtales, Louis F. de, 71. 
Powers, Hiram. 229. 
Priestley, Joseph, 81. 
Quincy, Edmund, 37. 
Quincy, Josiah, 39. 
Quincy, Josiah, Jr., 57. 
Ramsay, Allan, 315. 
Randolph, John, 169. 
Rantoul, Robert, 247. 
Raphael, 97. 



401 



INDEX OF NAMES. 



Reconstruction Act, 69. 
Riplej', Sarah Alden, 231. 
Rogers, Nathaniel P., 171. 
Rogers, Samuel, 229. 
Roland, Madame, 85. 
Ross, Sir James C., 117. 
Rousseau, Jean J., 195. 
Sachs, Hans, 339. 
Scheffer, Ary, 45. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 249. 
Sedgwick, C. M., 393. 
Sedgwick, Theodore, 29. 
Sewall, Samuel, 95. 
Sewal], Samuel E., 343. 
Seward, Wm. H., 149. 
Shakespeare, 125. 
Shaw, Lemuel, 11. 
Shelley, Percy B., 237. 
Sherman, Roger, 121. 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 363. 
Sigourney, Lydia H., 269. 
Simms, Thomas M., 113. 
Smith, Gerritt, 73. 
Smith, John, 131 . 
Somerville, Mary, 391. 
Sparks, Jared, 143. 
Stael, Auguste de, 265. 
Stanton, Edwin M., 3S5. 
Starbuck, Mary, 55. 
Stark, John, 261. 
Stearns, George L., 9. 
St. John de Matha, 43. 
Storrs, Charles B., 149. 
Story, Joseph, 2S5. 
Story, William W., 55 
St. Martin's Summer, 345. 
Stowe, Harriet B., 181. 
St. Pierre, B., 21. 
Sturge, Joseph, 235. 
Sumner, Charles, 7. 
Sumner, Election of, 125. 
Sutherland, Duchess of, 155. 
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 31. 



Talfourd, Thos. N., 27. 
Tauler, John, 183. 
Taylor, Bayard, 13. 
Taylor, Jane, 291. 
Telegraphic Message, 239. 
Thaxter, Celia, 197. 
Thiers, Louis A., 117. 
Thompson, George, 185. 
Ticknor, George, 235. 
Treadwell, Daniel, 309. 
Tuckerman, H. T., 121. 
Uhland, John L., 127. 
Usher, James, 5. 
Vandyck, Philip, 89. 
Very, Jones, 261. 
Virgil, 315. 

Waller, Edmund, 71. 
Ware, John, 385. 
Watt, James, 21. 
Watts, Isaac, 217. 
Wayland, Francis, 79. 
Webster, Daniel, 19. 
Weld, Angelina G., 55. 
Weld, Theodore D., 337. 
Wesley, John, 185. 
West, Benjamin, 309. 
Wheeler, Daniel, 361. 
Whitefield, George, 381. 
Whittier, John G., 383. 
Wilberforce, William, 257. 
Willis, Nathaniel P., 21. 
Wilson, Henry, 51. 
Wilson, John, 153. 
Winthrop, John, 13. 
Winthrop, Robert C., 145. 
Winthrop, Theodore, 289. 
Wirt, William, 341. 
Woolman, John, 253. 
Wordsworth, William, 109. 
Worlds Convention, 179. 
Wright, Silas, 157. 
Wyman, Jeffries, 245. 
Xavier, St. Francis, 369. 



402 



Index to Birthdays. 
A B 



Namb. 



Page. 



Name. 



Page. 



Index to Birthdays. 
C D 



Index to Birthdays. 
E F 



Index to Birthdays, 
G H 



Index to Birthdays. 
I «1 



Index to Birthdays, 
K L 



Index to Birthdays, 
M N 



Index to Birthdays, 
O P 



Index to Birthdays. 
Q R 



Index to Birthdays. 



Index to Birthdays. 
U V 



Index to Birthdays. 
W X 



Ifidex to Birthdays. 
Y Z 



